Limited Partners Summit 2021 | VCCircle | 18 February 2021 | Virtual Event

Alternative investors, who poured in record sums in India last year despite macroeconomic headwinds, have shown signs of resilience in 2020 even as the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown shook the economy to its roots and devastated vast chunks of local businesses.

Overall private equity and venture capital deal-making did slide early on during the lockdown but quickly stabilized thanks to a pick-up in seed-stage funding of startups and big-ticket PE transactions. The total deal value is pegged at $35 billion in the first 10 months of the year and the overall tally may well match, if not top, last year’s record.

To be sure, this was skewed by a string of large deals involving Reliance Industries Ltd. Private equity investment outside of Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail has slid, but stats collated by VCCEdge suggest that the long-term slide in PE deal volumes may have bottomed out. On the other side, while VCs are yet to loosen the purse strings, seed-stage investors are opening up after the blip. Private investors including angels, VCs and PE firms are back to sewing a new deal every eight hours, just a tad slower than the peak when a deal was struck every six hours!

This augurs well for private investments as investors set course for the next wave of growth capital funding and buyout firms find a bigger window of opportunity, especially for distressed and special situations deals. And then there is a bevy of VCs who don’t want to miss out on the next big startup idea as the count of unicorns keeps rising.

For Limited Partners (LPs), who have been historically grappling with returns and exits, the focus shifted to seeing how their general partners (GPs) respond to the shock, manage their portfolio and add value to their existing investees to help them ride out the storm. While several LPs participated in direct big-ticket deals, they also backed a few local GPs. As many as six VC funds hit first close and a similar number hit final close, including some marquee names. However, the fundraising picture for GPs of PE firms has been less rosy at a time when dozens of them are on the road.

Meanwhile, LPs are having to deal with new-age due diligence models and regulatory norms. They are also trying to align better their interests with GPs over aspects like treatment of expenses, waterfall structures, key-person clauses, quantifying and measuring responsible investment practices, and more frequent and detailed disclosures. On the flip side, GPs are trying to rebalance their LP base and targeting more local investors while creating unified structures to manage offshore and domestic investors. They also have to deal with liquidity in the system that has not allowed an appropriate correction in valuations despite the shock to the business environment.

To discuss the evolving nature of the LP-GP relationship and how the overall alternative investor class is tackling the challenges, VCCircle is delighted to announce the 12th edition of its flagship thought conclave—the Limited Partners Summit 2021. It would bring together leading global and domestic LPs, GPs, entrepreneurs, investment bankers, lawyers and other leaders from the deals ecosystem to look at the alternative investment opportunity in India. The summit will be spread across two days.

2021 Speakers

Jacob Chiu
Managing Director, HQ Capital Asia Limited

Chris Loh
Managing Partner, Axiom Asia Private Capital

Jai Rupani
Chief Investment Officer, Dinesh Hinduja Family Office

Murali Krishna V
Head-Investments & Strategy, Kolte-Patil Family Office

Vishesh Narang
Head Of Family Office, UKPI (Promoter of Berger Paints India Group)

Sunil Mishra
Partner-Primary Investments, Adams Street Partners

Arjun Anand
Executive Director, Verlinvest

Ajit Kumar
Managing Director, Evolvence India Fund

Dominic Goh
Principal, HarbourVest Partners (Asia) Limited

Harsh Singhal
Managing Director, CDPQ

Florian Kohler
Managing Director-Private Equity, OBVIAM

Neha Grover
South Asia Regional Lead - Private Equity, IFC

Sateesh Andra
MD, Endiya Partners

Puneet Nanda
Managing Director and CEO, ICICI Venture

Mohit Batra
Executive Director, ICICI Venture

Kanchan Jain
MD & Head of India Credit, Baring Private Equity Asia

Michael Liu
Managing Director, Portfolio Advisors (Hong Kong) Limited

Sujoy Bose
MD & CEO, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF)

Satrajit Bhattacharya
Treasury, HDFC Ltd.

Sachin Bid
Fund Manager- Venture Capital, Nippon India Alternative Investments

Gopal Jain
Managing Partner and Co-founder, Gaja Capital

Michael Fernandes
Partner, Leapfrog Investments

Rohan Kalia
Account Manager - Alternative Investments, Intralinks

Amit R. Krishnan
Co-Founder & Principal, FidelisWorld Group

Alok Verma
Senior Strategy Leader and Partner, Grant Thornton

2021 Partners

CO-PRESENTING PARTNER:
• ICICI Venture

SESSION PARTNERS:
• Gaja Capital
• Madison India
• SS&C Intra Links
• Fidelis World