Mumbai-based polymer emulsions maker Visen Industries Ltd is in talks to raise at least Rs200 crore from Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund, two people aware of the development said.
“Visen is in advanced talks with the Edelweiss fund to raise structured credit of around Rs200 crore, which will be used specifically to provide an exit to its existing private equity investor Carlyle Group,” one of the two people cited above said requesting anonymity, as the talks are private.
Carlyle, which invested in the company more than five years ago, is keen on exiting, he added.
Carlyle had invested $25 million in Visen Industries in 2011 through an affiliate—First Carlyle Ventures III, which was part of part of the Carlyle Asia Growth Partners IV, a $1 billion sector-agnostic fund. The fund invested in high growth companies in key Asian markets such as India, China, and South Korea.
Visen used the funds raised from Carlyle to expand its manufacturing capacity in India and abroad.
Emails sent on Friday to Vijay Nair, managing director at Visen Industries and to the company were not answeredSpokespersons for Carlyle and Edelweiss declined to comment on the development.
The Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund is a credit-focused fund, which announced a first close of $205 million in 2015. It makes credit transactions of $25-30 million. Edelweiss had earlier raised another similar fund with a corpus of $230 million.
Visen manufactures water-based polymer emulsions, catering to customers in paint, textile, adhesive and construction industries. Almost 75% of its business comes from the paints and coatings business.
It has long-standing relationships with industry players including Asian Paints, Berger Paints, Kansai Nerolac and Jotun Paints.
Visen also caters to export demand from customers in the Middle East and Africa.
The company has four manufacturing units in India, located at Tarapur in Maharashtra, Jammu, Chennai and Silvasa in Gujarat. It also has a manufacturing unit in the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE plant, started in 2015, was set up with an investment of around $50 million in the Hamriyah Free Zone near Sharjah. It makes polymer emulsions for paints and coatings, textiles and adhesives and has a capacity of around 120,000 metric tonnes per annum.
The Indian paint market is expected to reach Rs70,875 crore by 2019-20 from around Rs40,300 crore in 2014-15, reported the Press Trust of India on 6 January, citing a report from industry body Indian Paint Association.
The decorative paint market is expected to witness a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7% and the industrial paint market CAGR of 9.5%, according to the report. Decorative paint market size in the country was Rs30,385 crore and the Industrial Paint Rs9,915 crore in the financial year 2014-15, according to the report by Indian Paint Association.
Source: Mint