Global investment funds vie to be part of Premji PE Fund

Global bluechip investment funds which invest their billions of dollars as limited partners (LP) across various venture capital and private equity funds are understood to be vying with each other to be part of the private equity fund floated by India's software billionaire Azim Premji.

US-based pension funds such as California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), University Foundations from Yale, Stanford, Texas besides high net worth family offices like Rockefellers are among the active Limited Partners who invest in VC / PE funds.

PremjiInvest, the fund which currently has a corpus of $1 billion has been active during the year having invested in around six companies in sectors ranging from hospitality to healthcare to textiles. Prakash Parthasarathy, chief investment officer, PremjiInvest offered not to the comment on the interest from the global limited partners.

Sources, however, indicate that the investment managers of PremjiInvest have indeed received quite a few expressions of interest, on which they are working on whom to take on board.

"Given the prominence which Azim Premji comm-ands, it is not surprising that these global funds are interested to be part of this fund," an industry analyst noted. According to sources, this fund is understood to be beefing up its team having hired nearly a dozen investment professionals and recently took on board Sudip Banerjee, a Wipro veteran.