At a time when investors are queuing up to invest in start-ups and e-commerce, Siddharth Parekh wants to stay away. The scion of banker Deepak Parekh and co-founder of private equity firm Paragon Partners wants to stay focussed on bigger companies.

Risk factor

“Start-up is a high-risk game. Earlier, I had made investments in start-ups, which were from my personal money and those were in sectors that I personally liked. If they require more capital, I will consider that for those start-ups,” said Parekh, who has recently launched a private equity fund that will raise $200 million.

Paragon expects to close the first tranche of $60 million within the next 3-4 weeks. The entire $200 million will be raised by September 2016. Meanwhile, Paragon is looking at investing this money in mature businesses.

“The company is looking at businesses that need capital to grow. Keeping that in mind, we are seeing a lot of opportunities in the old economy sector, which might have gone through challenging times in the last few years,” Parekh said. The fund will invest $10-20 million in companies across sectors like manufacturing, infrastructure, financial services, consumer, healthcare and automobile.

‘No partnership’

Deepak Parekh’s elder son Aditya Parekh had also started a PE fund – Faering Capital – which had raised its maiden fund of ₹800 crore in 2009.

“We have decided to remain independent as there were no such discussions of joining hands with Faering. However, we see a lot of opportunity to collaborate, even though we have different set to areas to focus,” Siddharth Parekh added.

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