Japanese internet and telecom giant SoftBank’s $100-billion Vision Fund will make public market investments in India, a first for the deep-pocketed group, which drove up the euphoria around the local consumer internet ecosystem, people familiar with the matter told.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which boasts the largest corpus for any fund by size, will set up one of its four offices in New Delhi. The London-headquartered fund, headed by India-born Rajeev Misra, will also operate from San Francisco and Tokyo and is expected to hire people locally , where SoftBank already has a 25-member team working on investments related to renewable energy , sources indicated.

The fund, which has nearly completed raising $100 billion from a dozen marquee sponsors, will scout for ventures beyond e-commerce and ridehailing sectors here. “There are some great opportunities in public markets along with consumer-focused sectors like telecom and financial services, which the fund will tap,” said a person privy to the developments, who did not wish to be named.

The fund’s public market bet, globally and in India, would focus mostly on technology, media, and telecom (TMT), besides healthcare and life sciences. SoftBank has earlier made public investments part of its corporate treasury operations, but they weren’t significant or didn’t warrant disclosures.

With this new mammoth fund, SoftBank is institutionalising and building a public market investment strategy. SoftBank stepping into the Indian stock markets is noteworthy and comes at a time when foreign investors have remained subdued as several TMT scrips have been under pressure.

The Japanese group has roped in the likes of Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth manager, and Oracle chief Larry Ellison’s family office, to be part of the $100-billion fund, which was announced in October last year. Apple confirmed on Wednesday that it’s putting $1billion to the tech fund.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia’s government committed $45 billion to the Vision Fund over the next five years, while SoftBank said it will pump in $25 billion to back companies in future technologies across varied sectors. SoftBank has built close ties with Indian conglomerates like Bharti, Adani and Mahindras, which it would look to leverage. However, it has not approached any Indian industrialists to participate in the fund, the person said.

Separately, it would consider taking listed companies private in multi-billion dollar takeovers in the US, or majority acquisitions in other geographies. Misra, 54, who was head of strategic finance at the Japanese group since he joined in 2014, is the CEO of the fund, with a bunch of other India-origin senior executives like Alok Sama and Deep Nishar having been given key roles.

Source: Times of India