Avigo Capital buys 9.27% stake in SRL for Rs 100 cr

Private equity fund Avigo Capital Partners has picked up a 9.27 per cent stake in a pre-initial public offering (IPO) placement in Super Religare Laboratories (SRL) for around Rs 100 crore.

SRL had filed for an IPO in February. It had proposed to issue up to 28 million equity shares of face value Rs 10 each, including a pre-IPO placement of up to eight million equity shares, through a book building process.

Promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh recently got a nod from the company board to sell their 86 per cent stake in SRL to Fortis Healthcare (India). Avigo has invested $30 million in AMR Constructions, a Hyderabad-based mining and infrastructure services company, and $14 million in Delhi-based Naftogaz India, an engineering company in the oil and gas sector.

So far, Avigo has invested about $365 million (Rs 1,640 crore) in various companies. It closed its third fund, Avigo SME Fund III, at $240 million (Rs 1,080 crore) last year. It made two exits this year, selling 40 per cent stake in denim maker Spykar back to the promoters and selling its stake in Privi Organics to Standard Chartered PE. SRL has a network of eight reference laboratories, 181 network laboratories, 15 wellness centres and 888 collection centres. During the first nine months of 2010-11, it had served 4.2 million customers, aggregating 33,000 tests a day.