Ex-CVCI Honcho PRS Launches Exponentia Capital

By Reghu Balakrishnan

  • 01 Sep 2010

PR Srinivasan, the former managing director & India Region Head of Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI), is busy giving final contours to his new private equity venture christened Exponentia Capital. 

P R Srinivasan or PRS, as he is referred to in PE circles, in his next solo innings, is putting together a team of three Partners or Senior Partners who are expected to come on board by November. Sources familiar with the development said, Exponentia Capital will announce the launch of its first fund, Exponentia Opportunities Fund, in November. The maiden fund will target a corpus of $400 million with a hard cap of $500 million. The Fund will target a first close in middle of  2011.

PRS will be the CEO & MD of Exponentia Capital and the three senior executives are expected to join the firm by November.

When contacted by VCCircle, PRS confirmed the development. “Our fund has been named Exponentia Opportunities Fund. We expect to be operational in late November.” PRS, who resigned in April from CVCI, was on gardening leave since June and quit CVCI early this month.

Like PRS, the industry has seen a number of professionals going it alone to launch their own PE ventures.

In April this year, Subbu Subramaniam, former partner with Baring Private Equity Partners, launched his own fund under the banner of M Cap Fund Advisors. Harsha Raghavan, former India head of Candover, joined hands with Neeraj Bhargava, group chief executive officer of business process outsourcing services firm WNS Holdings Ltd to start PE fund-Steer Capital early this year.

Former ICICI Venture veterans--Jayanta Banerjee, Anand Vyas and Sunay Mathure--founded Pravi Capital with a target of $200 million this year. Rajesh Khanna, former India head for private equity major Warburg Pincus, is also learnt to be setting up his own fund.