Regulatory concerns keeping private equity funds away
According to the founder and CEO of Central Square Foundation and former senior managing director at Chris Capital Ashish Dhawan, there is a high possibility that India is going to see higher private equity interest in the near future along with a few changes in the sentiments and lessening in vital and valuable opportunities in the BRICS region.
One of the biggest challenges is high regulatory risks. Services, infrastructure firms or other entities need to be established in order to make money. Taking money in cash is also another way to extract some money. This is because there is no benefit or any kind of profit when it comes to core education and even though surplus is engendered, it is not of much use or help. According to Ashish Dhawan, even though he is very much passionate about education and a lot of money can flow in if core education opens up as a sector, he would still not be comfortable enough to invest into it unlike others since his crucial task is to make money as an investor.
Being asked about raising funds at Ashoka University, the CEO of Central Square Foundation replied that the project is huge and big chunks of money have been raised in order to build a liberal arts university in India, that too for the first time. There have been thousands of applications for the programs and courses when only 200 out of 1500 will be selected.
He also feels very positive about PE which is about to commence in the year 2014. Good investments have been made into companies over the past two years without any PE firm coming close to poor infrastructure related companies. He believes that everyone has learnt a major lesson and people are not going to give into infrastructure companies any time soon.
Source: Nitin Shrivastava
Central Square Foundation, Private Equity, Private equity firm, Private equity firms, Private equity funds, real estate private equity firm
