TR Capital leads on $150m India multi-asset continuation fund

TR Capital has led on a multi-asset continuation fund for three India-headquartered businesses.

Other buyers including Axiom Asia Private Capital, StepStone Group and Unigestion participated in the continuation fund which raised close to $150 million, according to a statement.

The vehicle will acquire interests in three companies from Indian-focused private equity firm Samara Capital’s $300 million Samara Capital Partners Fund II.

Two of the three companies are market leaders in India – Sahajanand Medical Technologies, which manufactures cardiovascular devices and FirstMeridian Business Services, a staffing company, TR Capital’s founder and chief executive Paul Robine told Secondaries Investor.

The third company, Hyderabad-based biryani chain restaurant Paradise Food Court, has a strong chief executive and management team, which has achieved growth and is focused on further growth of the business, Robine said.

The transaction was a typical fund restructuring with some of Samara’s Fund II investors looking for an exit, Robine said. The transaction increased distributed-to-paid-in towards 2x for the 2014-vintage fund, according to the statement. The vehicle’s term is scheduled to end in 2024.

UBS advised on the transaction.

The continuation fund is “one of the largest fund restructuring transactions in India” over the past decade, Robine said, adding that he expects there will be more of these transactions in the region over the coming five years.

“[Over] the past 10 to 15 years, a lot of growth capital funds were created in India, a lot of VC funds were created in India, but exits were not always there,” Robine added. Continuation funds are an “interesting way for GPs to create liquidity in a market that keeps maturing and that keeps becoming more and more exit oriented, which is a good thing for India”.

Up to around 2015 it was not so easy to exit positions on the India market, but liquidity has improved in India over the past five or six years, he said.

TR Capital anticipates the three companies should be exited within the next three to five years, Robine said.

The deal marks the second continuation fund TR Capital and Samara Capital have completed.

TR Capital led on the single asset continuation fund of Sapphire Foods, one of the largest franchisee operators of YUM! Brands in the Indian sub-continent, alongside Creador and NewQuest Capital Partners in 2021. The company listed on the National Stock Exchange of India that year.