Edelweiss group targets $1billion corpus for its first infra fund
MUMBAI: The Edelweiss group is raising its first infrastructure fund, targeting a corpus of at least $1 billion, its largest alternative asset fund till date, said three people aware of the development.
The group, through its various entities, manages several alternative investment funds such as credit funds, real estate funds and a distressed assets fund.
“Edelweiss plans to raise its first infrastructure fund and is targeting to raise at least $1 billion for it. The group has initiated preliminary discussions with investors and is currently also busy with setting up the team to manage the platform,” said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak with the media.
Edelweiss will start fullfledged marketing road shows for the fund raise by the end of December or early January, he said, adding that it expects to have the investment team in place by December.
“The firm will target a first close of $300-400 million and a final close of at least a billion dollars. Funds will be raised from both domestic and overseas institutional investors and to a small extent from high net-worth individuals,” the first person said.
According to the second person cited above, the fund will look at owning only operating assets in three sectors—roads, transmission and renewable energy. He too requested anonymity.
An email sent to Edelweiss group on Tuesday evening was not answered till press time. NEW DELHI: Complex rules at the municipal level in Delhi and Mumbai on parameters such as starting a business, dealing with construction permits and registering property continue to dog India’s Doing Business rankings.
This, despite India jumping 30 positions to 100th place among 190 countries in the latest edition of the rankings released on Tuesday by the World Bank, based on field surveys and interviews with corporate lawyers and company executives in Delhi and Mumbai.
With a weightage of 53% and 47% respectively, the bank takes these two cities to be representative samples for India. Hence, easier business rules in the two municipalities will further boost India’s ranking.
For example, the bank notes that though India has reduced the time needed to register a new business to 30 days now, from 127 days 15 years ago, the number of procedures is still cumbersome for local entrepreneurs who need to go through 12 to start a business in Mumbai against 11 in New Delhi. This is considerably higher than high-income countries where it takes five procedures on average. Though central regulations such as the Companies Act, 2013, play a major role in starting a business, state and local level regulations have played a role in India’s dip in rankings in this parameter to 156.
Though India’s ranking in dealing with construction permits improved by four positions to 181, the parameter remained
the country’s Achilles heel.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley while briefing reporters on Tuesday said the central government has been nudging state governments to move all construction permit applications online. “This reduces cost and eliminates corruption. In many cases in Delhi, it has been done,” he added.
Though in getting an electricity connection, India has a decent rank of 29 even after a drop from last year’s ranking of 26, there is a significant difference in cost of getting a connection between Delhi and Mumbai with scope for further improvement. Measured as a percentage of per capita income, cost of getting an electricity connection in Mumbai is 18.7% while in Delhi it is 165.8% against an average of 63% in most developed countries.