Nikhil Kamath, India’s celebrated start-up investor and fund manager, is in discussions with some of the leading sovereign funds and investment firms in the Gulf region for a partnership deal with True Beacon, his alternative investment fund (AIF).
Besides sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors and family-managed offices are among the investment entities on True Beacon’s radar for the proposed partnership deal, under which it proposes to manage a specified corpus of a fund in the region for investments in India.
“Yes, we are currently in talks with some of the investment funds in the Middle East for a partnership deal,” Kamath told Arabian Business.
“We are quite hopeful on this, though nothing has been finalised yet,” he added.
Though most of the leading investment firms in the Gulf region have offices in India to manage their India investment plans, there are instances of some of the investment funds in the Middle East parking specified amount of funds with asset management companies in India under exclusive arrangements for managing their investments in certain sectors in the country.
For instance, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has invested $1 billion with Kotak Investment Advisors (KIA), of which $500 million was with the special situation distressed fund and the rest with three real estate funds of the Indian firm.
Sources in asset management companies said generally investment funds in the Middle East prefer Indian funds have a two-year track record before striking partnership deals.
Kamath said True Beacon Fund One, its Mauritius-registered alternative fund (AIF) will complete two years of operation this September.
Nikhil Kamath, co-founder and chief investment officer of unicorn Zerodha and True Beacon
Though the True Beacon AIF is yet to have a two-year track record, its top executive hopes that the fund’s highly impressive record on return on investment (RoI) could help it to strike a deal with one of the Middle East funds soon.
True Beacon Fund One, which has about one-fifth of investors from the Middle East region, has reported a year-to-date (YTD) return of slightly over 40 percent at the end of 2020.
Kamath, a school dropout-turned star entrepreneur, founded start-up Zerodha, which acquired unicorn status without any external capital participation, has been betting big on Middle East investors to drive his ventures – Zerodha and True Beacon.
He also recently disclosed his plans to launch a second hedge fund – True Beacon Global – to Arabian Business, in which also he would be targeting a sizeable number of wealthy investors from the Middle East region.
The fund will have an entry level investment of $1 million.
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