Voyager Capital upbeat on India

Voyager Capital, a US-based fund , which kicked off its operations in September, 2004, has already invested about $16 million in 10 Indian companies. This represents about one-third of the fund's current corpus of $50 million.

The fund is in the process of identifying another eight to 10 companies to invest the rest of the corpus, after which the fund will seek to augment its corpus.

"We intend to grow the fund in the years to come," Shiv Puri, managing director, Voyager Investment Advisors, the advisors to the fund said.

The fund will invest primarily in publicly traded companies that are well positioned to capitalise on the economic growth in India, the fund said in a media statement.

Later, speaking to Business Standard, Puri said the fund follows a "private equity approach to investing in listed companies."

Explaining the concept, Puri said the fund does its analysis much the same way as a private equity investor does, looking for hidden strengths""in the management, in manufacturing practices and on the balance sheet""that may not have been properly appreciated in the wider markets.

The fund has an investment horizon of 1-3 years, by which time, the hidden strengths will have started showing results, he added.

"There is a tremendous amount of value hidden in listed companies that has not been fully reflected in prices, and our fund's philosophy is to draw on these hidden resources to deliver value to our investors," Puri said.

The fund has a set of 14 US-based institutional portfolio investors.

Puri said the fund is looking primarily at large cap companies whose risk-reward profile is better than that of mid-cap companies. The fund has set itself a cut off of $50 million (Rs 225 crore) in market capitalisation to determine the eligible companies to invest in.

Puri said the fund believed that "India is on the secular growth path, led by growth in infrastructure spending, and the start of a new capital expenditure cycle, along with domestic consumption."