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Exclusive: Ashok Wadhwa of Ambit Corporate Finance and Rajeev Agarwal, a former fund manager of India Value Fund Advisors (formerly GW Capital), are joining hands to launch a new mid-market private equity fund. The fund will be called Ambit Pragma Ventures, and is likely to have a corpus of $100 million to $125 million, VC Circle has learnt. The fund is expected to look at mid market companies exclusively.

Both Wadhwa and Agarwal could not be reached for comments. The fund raising and other regulatory work is currently going on and it will be a few months before the fund will be officially launched, sources said.

This will be Wadhwa's first foray into private equity business. Wadhwa's Ambit Corporate Finance, which is rated among the top five investment banks in India, had recently sold its stake in tax advisory arm Ambit RSM to PricewaterhouseCoopers when both merged early this year. Wadhwa exited RSM, and was believed to have netted about Rs 50 crore for his personal stake in the venture.

Agarwal had quit IVF Advisors in March this year to raise a fund of his own. Prior to joining IVF, Agarwal had spent over seven years in the telecommunications business in India and has worked for companies like Bharat Electronics, Wipro Infotech, Wipro British Telecom, and 3Com India.