Venture and growth equity investor SAIF Partners has just made its second investment in a listed company in India this year, an indicator of the firm reviving its programme to deploy a part of its latest fund in the public equity space.
SAIF Partners, which raised $350 million to make a final close for its latest India-dedicated fund- SAIF Partners India V- last year, has picked a small stake in Ratnamani Metals & Tubes Ltd, a stainless steel pipes and tubes manufacturer.
It bought 1.2% stake in the firm for Rs 30 crore ($4.5 million) last week through an open market transaction.
Early this year, it had picked a similar small stake in public listed automotive lighting & signalling equipment and rear view mirror maker Fiem Industries Ltd.
In the case of Ratnamani, SAIF Partners may be looking at the long term prospects of the firm. Last year was not too great financial for the company, which was founded over three decades ago by Prakash Sanghvi.
Ratnamani, which also has a small wind power business, saw 2.5% rise in revenues to Rs 1,720 crore with net profit shrinking 5.8% to Rs 163 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016.
The company that makes tubing and piping solutions to diverse range of industries including chemical, petro-chemical, refinery, fertiliser, oil & gas, water distribution, sugar, food & dairy among others, has plants at Chhatral and Indrad on Ahmedabad–Mehsana highway and at Bhimasar, Kutch, on Bachau–Anjar Road.
SAIF that has been investing in the country for over a decade and prides itself for having taken a bunch of private firms to the public market, has built a fairly active public equities portfolio in the past. It had particularly deployed a lot of capital soon after the Indian stock markets crashed after hitting a peak in the last bull run that ended in January 2008.
Even as it kept sealing a one-off deal in the public market space, it has been focusing more on venture investments for the last couple of years.
However, it did make a PIPE (private investment in public enterprise in industry parlance) last year when it picked 10% stake in KDDL, a maker of watch components and the parent of luxury watch retailer Ethos.
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