12 September 2016, USA :
Homegrown private equity company India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA) has invested $40 million in Hyderabad-based seed firm SeedWorks International Pvt. Ltd, said a top executive of the fund.
“We have been evaluating the food and agri-business space for a while now. We have just acquired a majority stake in SeedWorks, which is in the seeds business with a focus on rice and cotton,” said Srikrishna Dwaram, partner, IVFA.
“The investment was through a secondary share purchase, but going ahead, as we implement the growth strategy for the company, we will look at investing more funds in the company,” he said.
SeedWorks India Private Limited engages in breeding, producing, and marketing hybrid seeds. It offers tomato, pepper, okra, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, ridge gourd, cucumber, cauliflower, watermelon, cotton, and hybrid rice seeds to farmers. The company also offers research and development programs. It sells its products through a network of distributors and dealers in India.
Dwaram said rice is the company’s primary business in which it has domestic as well as export operations. The company reported revenue ofRs.150 crore in the last financial year. Of this, sales of rice hybrids contributed almost 70%.
IVFA is currently investing out of its fifth fund, Indium Fund V, and has deployed more than a third of the $700 million corpus. Prior to SeedWorks, the most recent investment from the fund was in Kids Clinic India Pvt Ltd, operator of Cloudnine Hospitals, in which it invested about $60 million. Source- Livemint
