New Delhi, June 3 -- Homegrown private equity firm Kedaara Capital has invested in a healthcare-technology company, which is backed by the Jhunjhunwala family, via its public markets strategy that it added a year and a half ago to run adjacent to its mainstay PE business.
Kedaara, founded in 2012 by Manish Kejriwal, Sunish Sharma and Nishant Sharma, had been focusing on growth-oriented and selective control PE bets in Indian companies since inception and started the public markets strategy in late 2024, VCCircle reported at the time.
As part of the strategy, Kedaara launched a fund to make private investments in public equities (PIPE). This fund bought shares of Inventurus Knowledge Solutions Ltd, which operates as IKS Health and provides revenue cycle management services to healthcare companies, for about Rs 25.31 crore ($2.6 million) on Wednesday.
The fund bought the shares from Scott Hayworth, stock-exchange data show. Hayworth is CEO at Hayworth Ventures and chair of the advisory board for IKS Health.
Mumbai-listed IKS Health commands a market capitalisation of Rs 29,296 crore. This means Kedaara's public markets fund picked up a stake of less than 0.1% in the company.
IKS Health also counts Government Pension Fund Global, the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, as a public shareholder. The company, which was founded in 2006, is controlled by a group of trusts promoted by the family of the late stock market investor Rakesh Jhujhunwala.
IKS Health went public in December 2024. Its shares closed at Rs 1,707.50 apiece on the BSE on Wednesday. That's 28.5% above the company's IPO price. In comparison, India's stock market benchmarks have fallen around 10% since December 2024.
Kedaara bought the shares at Rs 1,633 apiece. This means it is already sitting on an upside of 4.6%. The investment comes soon after IKS acquired US-based Trubridge for $565 million in April.
This is the second investment by Kedaara's public markets fund in less than a month. In May, the fund bought shares of Mumbai-listed eyewear retailer Lenskart for about Rs 45 crore through open market transactions. The PIPE fund had previously invested Rs 10 crore in Lenskart as an anchor investor ahead of the company's initial public offering in November last year. Lenskart also happens to be part of Kedaara's PE portfolio.
Apart from IKS Health and Lenskart, Kedaara's public markets fund invested Rs 8 crore in helmet and automobile accessories maker Studds Accessories Ltd last year. In addition, it invested Rs 30 crore in ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company in December last year and a smaller amount in Aditya Infotech earlier this year.
The public markets fund is managed by managing directors and co-heads Prakash Gaurav Goel, Parin Mehta and Ashay Shah, according to Kedaara's website.
With its new public markets fund, Kedaara joins the likes of PE peers such as ChrysCapital, which recently expanded its investment horizon for listed companies. In March 2023, ChrysCapital launched a full-fledged vehicle under the Clarus platform to make investments in publicly-listed companies. A few other marquee alternative investment firms such as WestBridge Capital and Nalanda Capital have also built multi-billion-dollar portfolios largely through public market bets, though with an evergreen fund structure.
Kedaara is one of the leading PE firms in India. Its typical PE investments range from $75 million to $150 million, but it can pursue larger deals through co-investments. In 2024, Kedaara marked the final close of its fourth PE fund at $1.74 billion (Rs 14,500 crore then), raising the largest corpus by any Indian private equity firm until then, a milestone surpassed by ChrysCapital, which scooped up $2.2 billion last year.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.