Here's a fund to bet on late-stage private equity, pre-IPO investments

Mumbai: Edelweiss Wealth Management (EWM) on March 9 launched the third series of Edelweiss Crossover Opportunities Fund (Crossover III) with a targeted corpus of Rs 5,000 crore ($700 million).

As a Category II alternative investment fund (AIF), it will focus on late-stage private equity (PE) and pre-initial public offering (IPO) investments.

Crossover III will see the largest fundraise in the series, having raised Rs 2,200 crore through the earlier series, the company said.

EWM’s managing director and CEO Nitin Jain said private equity is now a well-established asset class in India and is making a significant contribution to the development of the country’s emerging corporate sector while generating strong returns for its investors.

The company’s managing partner and head (private equity) Pranav Parikh said the phase of 2-3 years pre-IPO and 2-3 years post-IPO represents one of the best phases of growth and makes for a very attractive investment strategy.

“Crossover III will focus on this phase of high growth of future-ready businesses and partner with them as they transform into lasting publicly-listed franchises,” Parikh said.

The fund will partner with high-quality entrepreneurs and management teams as they transition from being privately held businesses to high-performance and enduring public franchises, the release said.

With the late-stage PE/pre-IPO strategy, the fund opens up access to private investments which usually are unavailable to most investors and enables them to capitalize on structural growth trends early on with reasonable exit time-horizons, it said.