New Delhi, May 14 -- Singapore-headquartered wealth and asset management firm Lighthouse Canton has launched a private credit fund targeting a corpus of Rs 1,200 crore ($125.3 million), including a greenshoe option, to invest in structured credit opportunities in India.
The fund, named LC Luminere Credit Fund, is registered as a Category-II alternative investment fund (AIF) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). It will focus on structured credit investments in mid-to-large corporates and target opportunities across growth financing, acquisitions, refinancing and sponsor-backed transactions.
The company said the fund has already warehoused its first investment and built a near-term pipeline across sectors, including industrials, conglomerates and consumer companies. The fund has a tenure of six years, with an average deal tenure of around three years.
"India is entering a pivotal phase of private credit expansion, supported by strong macro fundamentals and a widening gap between credit demand and supply," said Sanket Sinha, managing director and CEO, global asset management, Lighthouse Canton.
"LC Luminere Credit Fund is designed to deliver consistent, risk-adjusted returns by focussing on fundamentally strong businesses and disciplined credit underwriting. We believe this is the right fund at the right time, built for India's credit cycle and backed by the institutional depth to deliver," Sinha added.
The firm said the investment team has deployed more than $2 billion across special situations and structured debt investments through previous roles at financial institutions.
Founded in 2014, Lighthouse Canton manages more than $5 billion in assets globally and operates across Singapore, Dubai, India and London.
The firm is also exploring real estate investment opportunities in India and plans to add at least two cities, Mumbai and Bengaluru, to its local portfolio, Sinha had told VCCircle in an interview earlier this year.
The planned portfolio expansion comes about a decade after the firm made its first investment in a biotech park in Hyderabad and nearly five years after it inducted Ivanhoe Cambridge, the real estate investment arm of Canadian pension fund CDPQ, as a major investor in the platform.
CDPQ, which rebranded itself as La Caisse last year, has since integrated its real estate portfolio under the parent brand, dropping the Ivanhoe name.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.