Private equity firm Olympus Capital is setting up its India office. The Asia-focused PE fund's India operations will be headed by Gaurav Malik. He has been oveerseeing India investments for some time now. The fund already has a skeleton presence in Gurgaon, which will be now expanded to a full-fledged office with a six-member team. Olympus, which has investments in many Asian countries like Japan, Korea and Greater China, is not new to India. It has a $100 million investment in Raman Roy's Quattro, a stake in Sanghvi Movers, and has already exited Satyam Computer's Nipuna Services. It also held a stake in HDFC Bank from which it exited.
Gaurav Malik, who has been appointed as Managing Director for India operations, joins from Olympus's Hong Kong office. Malik has been working with Olympus since 2002 and will set up an office in the Delhi NCR region. An IIT and IIM alumnus, Malik was working with ABN AMRO before joining Olympus. He was also on board of Sanghvi Movers.
Olympus has offices in Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo and its target industries include manufacturing, agribusiness, business services, environmental services and financial services. Some of its other portfolio companies in Asia include Sichuan Emeishan Special Cement Co. Ltd. (China), Kyoto Kimono Yuzen (Japan) and China Zhongwang Holdings Limited (China).
In 2006, Olympus had acquired a significant minority stake in Quattro BPO for $100 million. It had also invested $10 million in Nipuna, a BPO of Satyam Computers. It has exited that investment last year by selling its 25% stake to Satyam for $46.5 million. Besides this it also holds a 6% stake in crane hiring company Sanghvi Movers, which it bought in 2006 for around Rs 65 crore.
