Ariston Capital Services Pvt. Ltd, a financial services group that engages in M&A and private equity placement, debt syndication, management advisory and quantitative trading, has received SEBI approval to launch Ariston IET Fund, a statement said. The fund will target an initial close at Rs 500 crore and would have tenure of seven years.
Fund raising has commenced for the Ariston IET Infrastructure Fund 1, the first scheme under the Fund, with a target corpus of Rs 1,200 crore (with a green-shoe option of Rs 300 crore), which will focus on investing in companies in infrastructure and allied sectors.
“Our target investors, including domestic financial institutions, banks, corporates and select UHNIs, have shown strong interest in participating in the fund. We are expecting to reach our first close by year-end,” said Ram Khanna, Managing Director, Ariston Capital Services Pvt. Ltd.
“The Ariston IET Fund has a one-of-its-kind structure, where there has been no loading of costs to the investors. Also, the revenues to the fund managers have been back-ended, and they will receive their share of the profits only after the entire corpus of the fund and the hurdle rate have been paid back to the investors, thus aligning the interests of the fund managers with the performance of the Fund,” said Sunil Tandon, Joint Managing Director, Ariston Group, who has been credited with initializing and implementing the first large PPP projects in India in various sectors such as ports, airports and rail.
The Executive Chairman of the Fund, SS Kohli, is the ex-Chairman of IIFCL and Punjab National Bank, and has hitherto played a pivotal role in the establishment of IIFCL, the Government of India’s infrastructure lending arm.
The Ariston IET Fund team consists of professionals with hands-on managerial experience spanning the infrastructure project development, banking, infrastructure lending, private equity and financial advisory fields. Shirish Navlekar, CEO of the Fund, is the ex-CFO of the Delhi Airport, and CEO of the Delhi Aerocity.
An independent governing council chaired by SP Talwar, former Deputy Governor, RBI, has been formed to protect and enhance transparency and corporate governance for the fund and its investee companies.
