India Value Fund renamed True North

Re-branding idea came after IVFA got feedback that the brand did not reflect its model

India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA), a home-grown private equity firm, has announced a new brand identity, True North.
 
This was unveiled on Wednesday in the presence of tennis star Andre Agassi. The entity has also set a target to increase its deployment by five times in the next 15 years and, realign its sector focus.
 
Vishal Nevatia, managing partner, said IVFA was formed 17 years earlier and they had worked with about 30 businesses, investing Rs 8,000 crore of equity capital. These businesses were able to grow revenue and operating earnings at an annual average of 25 and 20 per cent, respectively, during their partnership. Since inception, he claimed, they'd helped generate 45,000 jobs.
 
The re-branding idea came after IVFA got feedback from various stakeholders that the brand did not reflect its model. “Our single most important thing is commitment to values, while strategy and other things can change, and that is what we want to communicate through this re-branding,” said Nevatia. True North will help to find people North and aspiration in a right way, he added.
 
It has also restructured its business and investment management teams by sector specialisation. In these 17 years, the focus has been health care, financial services and consumer goods. In recent times, it added technology product services.
 
It plans to commit 80-90 per cent of its capital in these sectors.
 
At present, the combined corpus is a little over $2 billion, across five independent funds. It is currently investing out of Fund V, which has a corpus of $700 mn
 
Each sector will be led by one partner from the investment division and one from the business management division, who are largely chief executives (CE) of companies. The partners include Ajay Bakshi, CE of Manipal Health Enterprise, Akash Malik of Cloudnine, Bala Malladi, CE of ACT, Amit Garg, CE of InLogistics, and others.