As part of his newly launched blog, PE industry professional Varadharajan has a post on the reasons why:
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in
Lack of focus/segmentation: I am yet to see more than 6-8 funds that pridethemselves on their focus - geography, verticals or deal types (venture, growth, buy-out, restructuring). Everyone's favourite sector seems education, healthcare and all else where India's per capita consumption is woeful. Where are the proprietary deal flows, where is the ability to construct a deal (and not study an IM for its pros and cons), where is the network of relationships ?
Impending battle for exits: This is going to be fun to watch. All the excesses from 2007 and 2008 have resulted in PE invested companies being valued at astronomical valuations (favourite whipping boys being retail, education, aviation where there is no evident route to a profitable scale-up with the exception of a honourable few). Case in point, a company that was invested into by a PE fund was valued at Rs. X in Jan '09 when the PE fund sold their stake to a counterpart. Now, I hear the going value is Rs. 2 X with hardly a change in fundamentals. Basic laws of economics point to the fact that in any free market arbitrage opportunities vanish fairly quickly. Hopefully, it would happen here as well.
Forward integration by LPs: if your friendly Mutual Fund told you that he did nothing with your money all year long and knocks off 2% off the corpus as ostensible "management fee", would'nt you be mad at him ? Ironically in an immature market like India, it does not take one too much of an effort to hire a couple of smart traders and generate a return of 15-20% from public markets. If so, what is the big deal in getting a 25% IRR from an illiquid asset class over a 5-7 year time period.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in