SBICAP Ventures, a part of India’s largest lender State Bank of India, is looking to address the unmet capital needs faced by the country’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) by ramping up investments through its fund of fund (FoF) Self Reliant India (SRI).
According to industry estimates, companies across the MSME, SME, fintech, manufacturing, and services sectors in India together have a credit demand of about $4-7 billion.
Launched in October 2021, SRI Fund has a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore ($1.2 billion). The FoF is focused on creating a large impact in the farthest regions of the country, Akshay Panth, CIO, Neev Fund & Head – FoF, told DealStreetAsia in an interview.
Neev Funds, a direct investment vehicle managed by SBICAP Ventures, invests in climate, environment, sustainability and social impact sectors. The second investment vehicle under the NEEV umbrella has a target corpus of Rs 2000 crore, of which over 50% has been already been raised.
SBICAP Ventures currently manages three alternate investment funds (AIF), including Neev Fund I and Neev Fund II; and SWAMIH Investment Fund I; besides FoFs such as Self Reliant India Fund and UK India Development Cooperation Fund with a total AUM of over Rs 32,500 crore.
“Nearly Rs 400 crore has been disbursed to these daughter funds who have in turn invested around Rs 3,000 crore in over 140 MSMEs operating across the country,” he added.
The Indian government, through the Ministry of MSME, is the anchor investor in the SRI Fund, while National Small Industries Corporation Limited (NSIC) is the sponsor of the fund. The SRI Fund is a scheme of NSIC Venture Capital Fund Limited (NVCFL), NSIC’s wholly-owned subsidiary.
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