Wexford Capital LLC, a US-based investment advisor with close to $7.5 billion assets under its management, is planning to make around $100 million private equity investments in India in the next 12 months through its India partner, Baseline Capital Advisors.While Wexford Capital has been investing in public securities in the country to a substantial extent for quite some time, this is a beginning of its private equity foray into the country, which would be exclusively handled through Baseline, the first private equity firm to operate from Hyderabad.This initial investment is expected to be made into 3-5 companies, mostly based in Hyderabad."Funds under our management are tied up for up to 12 years, hence, we are looking at strategic investments in India and not quick profits," Joseph said in response to a question as to whether they have any time frame in mind with regard to exit routes. However, on a medium to long term basis, the company is expecting 2-4 times of returns on their private equity investment in India. He said they would pursue opportunities in India in a variety of sectors including energy, infrastructure, natural resources and technology with enormous capital at their disposal.Bharani Bobba, one of the five partners who promoted Baseline private equity firm with offices located in New York and Hyderabad, said the company is currently negotiating with several companies for private equity investment and the deal with some of these companies is expected to be concluded this year itself.Wexford Capital is providing the entire fund required for the current investment opportunities scouting for by Baseline, though the Baseline partners would also investing up to 10% of the future private equity deals along with Wexford, according to Ramesh Babu Byrapaneni, one of the partners of the newly floated private equity firm."It takes 12 to 18 months to raise a fund for equity investments. Now immediate capital is available through our partnership with Wexford Capital as we are very excited about the investment opportunities in India," Brooks Schaden, a Baseline partner said while giving reasons for not raising the investment fund on their own.While speaking on the investment opportunities in India, Howard Endelman, another partner of the Baseline said: "The total private equity pumped into India this year is $10 billion while the Indian government is talking about over $500 billion investments in infrastructure alone." Interestingly all the US partners of Baseline have decided to spend half of their time working from Hyderabad.
