Cyrus Vandrevala: London's Rising Bollygarch

LONDON, April 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Cyrus Vandrevala is only in his 40s and famously hosted a concert and dinner at Queen Elizabeth's Buckingham Palace to mark her son and heir Prince Charles' birthday. Now, his Intrepid Capital Partners (ICP), an investment firm jointly promoted with legendary American venture capitalist Warren V. "Pete" Musser and headquartered in the United States, is lending Rs1,000 crores of capital to infrastructure and real estate developers in western India. 

Joe Deluca, managing director of ICP, said: "This is an underserved market as it requires very specific on-the-ground experts to make such investments. ICP has that expertise and experience." 

ICP maintained the proposed debt fund is a first of its kind. It focuses on participating in the debt segment of a capital structure as opposed to equity, providing loans to cash-strapped mid-size developers with one to four year projects. 

An ICP spokesman stated: "The fund will have a debt corpus of Rs1,000 Cr and will target a 20% IRR." It will lend primarily to developers of residential projects and selected commercial properties in and around Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad, Gujarat and Bengaluru.   

The fund is co-led by Deluca, who has previously managed US$1 billion of transactions for ICP, including many in India, and Roy Rodrigues, a former India head of Oak Investment Partners and previously a managing director at Bear Stearns.  

Rodrigues said: "We are very excited to use ICP's platform in India to invest in debt."   

The ICP spokesman added: "This is a first tranche of what could in due course become a Rs5,000 crore facility." 

Since it was founded in 2001, ICP has invested into India, primarily as an equity investor in IT-ITES-BPO, infrastructure and real estate. 

Vandrevala first came into the limelight when the UK's largest selling broadsheet The Daily Telegraph described him as a "suave and immaculate" technology investor who with his family had lived six months at London's prestigious Claridge's hotel before buying a house in the British capital, where he re-located from the United States. He supports Charles' charities to preserve Indian elephants and restore Dumfries House, a stately home in Scotland.     

Last month, he was mentioned in a first ever Global India Rich List, which said "estimates of his net worth have varied between $2 billion and $6 billion." The Asian Business Awards thereafter named him the "Global Investor of the Year."