RV Capital Management Pvt.’s India unit plans to raise 8 billion rupees ($96.1 million) through its first India private credit fund, joining a growing list of global managers that are setting up similar ventures in the nation.
The fund will primarily invest in mid-market corporates, while putting up to 20% of capital in listed local-currency bonds, Shyamal Karmakar, managing director and chief investment officer at RV Capital Advisory India Pvt., a unit of Singapore-based firm, said in an interview in Mumbai. The five-year private credit fund is “targeting a rupee return of 14%-16%,” he added.
RV Capital is entering India at a time when Asia’s third-largest economy is set to become a hotspot in the region for private credit, in part because of rules that forbid bank loans being used for mergers and acquisitions. India-focused assets under management in private debt nearly doubled to $15.5 billion as of December 2022 from a year earlier, according to financial data provider Preqin.
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RV’s India fund is sector agnostic, Karmakar said, but will stay away from funding real estate construction, venture debt and also those companies where lenders have taken a haircut but the management hasn’t changed.
“We are open for holding company, promoter, acquisition types of asset-backed financing,” he said.
The focus will be on the deal structure and collateral to reduce credit risk and ensure recovery in a scenario where the underlying credit isn’t doing well, he added.
