India head of PE firm CVC Capital on his way out, firm might appoint new MD

CVC Capital will see its India head Amit Soni leave the global private equity firm soon, possibly by the end of the year, marking a second big exit after Mohit Goyal quit earlier this year. Siddharth Patel, currently managing partner and based in Singapore, is likely to oversee the India operations, three people with knowledge of the development said.

The firm, armed with its sixth Asia fund—CVC Capital Partners Asia VI—with a corpus of $6.8 billion that it raised earlier this year, is likely to increase its pace of investment in India and the change of guard will enable it, these people said on condition of anonymity. “The firm is looking to strengthen its presence in India and is looking to hire a senior managing director level executive to help run the operations,” the first person cited above said.

The Luxembourg-based fund with more than €188 billion of assets under management globally has invested in companies such as Indian Premier League franchise Gujarat Titans, hospital chain Healthcare Global, industrial chemicals maker Sajjan India and data and professional services company United Lex.

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Goyal was CVC Capital's India managing director based in Mumbai and was responsible for its investment in Gujarat Titans.

The firm is currently in the process of selling its stake in listed oncology-focused hospital chain Healthcare Global, Mint had reported in May this year. Temasek Holdings, TPG, Bain Capital and VPS Healthcare (now Burjeel Holdings) are in the fray for CVC's 60.4% stake.

“Amit Soni is likely to leave by the end of the year,” the second person cited above added.

Soni joins a list of senior PE managers who have recently left or are on their way out of global firms. Sandeep Naik, Asia head for General Atlantic is reportedly leaving the firm. Last year, Shashank Singh, partner and head of India at Apax, had quit.

Emailed queries to spokesperson for CVC and Amit Soni remained unanswered till press time.

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In its statement announcing the fund close in February this year, CVC said that its Asia VI fund will focus on control, co-control and partnership investments in high-quality businesses in core consumer and services sectors across Asia. CVC has been active in Asia since 1999 and in this time it has made more than 80 investments in the region.

As Indian market matures, there are a lot of buyout and controlled deals opportunities that come up for investors such as CVC. As per global consulting firm EY’s report- India Trend Book 2024, there were 56 buyout deals with a total value of $12 billion in calendar year 2023, compared to 53 deals totalling $10.4 billion in 2022. Interestingly, buyouts made up almost a quarter of the private equity and venture capital deal flows in the country, which stood at $49.8 billion in 2023, the EY data showed.

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