Everstone Capital Advisors and Emerging India Fund (EIF), a fund by ICICI Bank, have together invested $23.5 million (Rs 129.3 crore) in Sohan Lal Commodity Management Pvt Ltd for a 25.55 per cent and 6.93 per cent stake, respectively. This is the Series C round of funding for the warehousing and collateral management company.
Return backers Mayfield Fund and Nexus India Direct Investments (II) (Nexus) have also participated in the fresh round of funding.
With this funding, Sohan Lal becomes India’s largest funded collateral management company, with the maximum number of institutional private equity investors as the shareholders.
Sandeep Sabharwal, CEO of Sohan Lal Commodity Management Pvt. Ltd., had earlier told VCCircle that investments will be utilised in the warehousing space and also for ancillary services like agriculture financing, supply chain management and technology. At present, the firm has 90 warehouses and is looking to expand to 250 in the near future. Sabharwal also had said that the employee strength will almost double from the current 255 to 500 by the first quarter of next year.
In March, 2011, Mayfield India and Nexus Venture Partners invested Rs 35.5 crore in Sohanlal Commodity.
Sohan Lal Commodity Management is focused on providing post-harvest agricultural solutions. It provides agri-commodity warehouse management and procurement solutions to farmers, processors, traders, agri exchanges and government across 70 locations and 12 states in India. The company works across all types of agri-commodities ranging from cereals, pulses, oil seeds and spices, with a warehousing space of more than 150,000 metric tonne of over one million sq feet.
The company works with some of the leading names in the agri-commodity space such as Cargill, AWB, Adani, Jindal, Ruchi Soya, Louis Dreyfus, Glencore as a service provider.
(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)
