Siddharth Mehta’s views on investment strategy, focus areas and more
January 6th, 2020
Bay Capital Partners, an India-focused investment firm, has been investing in publicly traded companies for about 13 years. Its present portfolio companies include Bajaj Finserv, HDFC and Naukri.com parent Info Edge. In the past, it has also invested in Sterling Holiday Resorts, Westlife Development, Religare Enterprises, Samco Securities and Vini Cosmetics.
Bay Capital, which was founded in 2006, manages several funds and special purpose vehicles. The asset manager raises money mostly from institutional North American investors that include endowments, foundations, family offices and corporate pension funds.
In an exclusive interaction with VCCircle, founder and CIO Siddharth Mehta reveals that Bay Capital manages about half a billion dollars across various funds. He also speaks about winding down the India Discovery Fund that rolled out the year the asset manager set up operations as an investment firm.
Excerpts:
Could you tell us about the firm’s focus areas and the structure of the funds you manage?
We are a focused investment fund. Our predominant focus is on public investments in India. We are based across Mumbai, Singapore and London. We manage money for both European and North American institutional investors.Our public market fund is open-ended and we have a couple of private vehicles which we used in the past for our legacy private deals. Ninety per cent of our book is invested in India.
Where do you raise money from? And how often?
About 90% of the money comes from institutional North American investors. We raise money on a quarterly basis, and will continue to raise money to scale our evergreen public markets fund.
What type of vehicles does the firm manage?
Our primary investment fund is the Bay Capital India Fund, which invests in the public markets by identifying and buying high-quality businesses with stellar capital allocation, exemplary corporate governance and strong competitive advantages.We have four-five types of vehicles. We have India Discovery Fund, India Horizon Fund, Bay Capital India Fund, Bay Capital Investments and a couple of SPVs that invest in India.
The India Discovery Fund, launched in 2006, has a few legacy investments and is in the wind-down mode. The India Horizon Fund is more of an SPV that we use for making public market investments which don’t fit in with our long-only strategy.
Bay Capital Investments is our private equity, FDI norm-compliant vehicle. Bay Capital India Fund is focused on listed equities and mainly invests in consumer businesses. The two funds will be the remaining vehicles after the Discovery Fund is shut down.
This interview first appeared on VCCircle.com and can be read the rest of the interview here:
https://www.vccircle.com/bay-capital-co-founder-siddharth-mehta-on-investment-strategy-focus-areas-and-more
Posted by Siddharth Mehta, Founder & CIO
