UTI VF to raise $500 mn corpus for Fund 3

Hyderabad, July 2 (UNI) UTI Venture Fund (UVF) is raising a 500 million US Dollar corpus for investment in infrastructure services, alternative energy, healthcare and education, according to UVF Managing Director and CEO Raj Kumar.

The new private equity fund, Fund III, with borrowings support from external and domestic markets, is likely to close by December this year. The fund will remain focused on new verticals.

The proceedings from its earlier offerings--Fund I and Fund II-- amounting to 250 million USD was invested in 18 companies.

One of the companies, Excelsoft, had yielded 50 times the investment, the highest any private equity fund in India had got.Suzlon fetched 25 times for Fund II.

UVF, which had exited most of the companies over four or five years, was looking at outdoor media firms for attractive PE investment.

Despite the bloodbath at the BSE and NSE, Mr Rajkumar felt the equity market "is still attractive and expected to improve over the next six to ten months".

UNI DB GM 1832