JM Financial Private Equity, the PE fund of diversified financial services group JM Financial, has signed an agreement to invest Rs 35 crore in Pune-based consumer packaged food company Walko Food Company.

The investment would be made from JM Financial India Fund II. This is the eighth investment from Fund II, which has a total corpus of about $100 million.

“The company is the second-largest natural ice-cream brand in the country, and had earlier launched a direct-to-consumer distribution model, with sales being conducted through online aggregators. This helped Walko Food to double its sales on a monthly run-rate basis over the last year, while the market for ice-cream had declined during the Covid times,” Darius Pandole, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (PE and Equity AIFs) at JM Financial said.

Walko, which owns the natural ice-cream brand ‘NIC’, has a manufacturing plant in Pune and retails across 50 cities through multiple sales channels such as food delivery platforms, modern trade, parlours and horeca. In addition, it had recently launched a desi kulfi brand, ‘ Grameen’ .

“The funding would be used for growth, mainly to increase manufacturing capacity and spruce up distribution and marketing channels,” he added.

Dexter Capital Advisors (investment banker) and Think Law (legal advisor to JM Financial India Fund II) were the advisers to the deal.

Walko was founded by first-generation entrepreneur Jeetendra Bhandari, who had worked with multinational companies such as Coca-Cola and Walmart in the US.

Jeetendra Bhandari, Managing Director at Walko, said: “Ice-cream per capita consumption in India is very low when compared to G-20 economies and as such it provides long-term secular growth opportunity. We see excellent growth potential for NIC and Grameen in the coming years”.

ONE MORE INVESTMENT

JM Financial Private Equity has invested in three companies since January 1 this year from Fund II, and it would make “one more” investment in the next quarter or so. 

Other investments from the fund were in India Home Loan, Spandana Sphoorty Financial, Innovcare Lifesciences, Isthara Parks Private, and Canpac Trends.

Following the complete deployment of Fund II, the company would look at raising its third fund, Pandole said, without providing any details.

Also Read: JM Financial PE to invest ₹60 crore in Canpac Trends

 

Also Read: JM Financial sees a bumper year for fund-raising from capital markets

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