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Future Group To List Venture Cap Arm This Fiscal

By Reuters

  • 16 Sep 2009

India's Future Group plans to raise more than 10 billion rupees ($210 million) through an initial public offering of its venture capital arm, and hopes to raise a similar amount through selling some retail assets.

Chief executive Kishore Biyani declined to comment on media reports that Future Group was in talks with France's Carrefour for a retail tie-up in India.

"I'm not going to talk about Carrefour now," Biyani told reporters at an industry conference when asked if he was in talks with the French retailer.

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Future Ventures would be listed by the end of the 2009/10 fiscal year in March, Biyani said. Plans for an IPO papers had been filed with regulators in February 2008, but were shelved after last year's collapse in the stock market.

Future Group also includes Pantaloon Retail, India's largest listed retailer, and financial services firm Future Capital Holdings, which listed in early 2008.

Biyani said the group, which raised about 3 billion rupees in June through preferential allotments of Pantaloon shares, was planning to raise about 10 billion rupees in the next eight weeks.

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Biyani said while the Pantaloon board had earlier approved raising 10 billion rupees through the sale of shares to investors, there were no plans as yet for an qualified institutional placement (QIP)

"We are not looking at QIP," he said.

"An option which is emerging would be selling some of the non-core retail assets," he said, but would not be drawn on what specific assets could be sold.

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The company, which is a big player in food and fashion merchandise in India, was looking at sports goods retailing as a opportunity to boost revenues, he said.

Future Group operates more than 12 million square feet of the 35 million square feet of retail space which the organised retail sector occupies in India.

Biyani has previously said Future Group would have a turnover of about 300 billion rupees in about four to five years.

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