Bhubaneshwar-based microfinance lender, Annapurna Finance has raised Rs 155 crores ($23m) from Oman India Joint Investment Fund II, a mid-market private equity firm backed by Oman’s State General Reserve Fund and State Bank of India, as reported by VC Circle and Mint. The current fund-raise marked as the second investment by the PE joint venture in the same week, the earlier being in Pune-based automobile component maker Divgi TorqTransfer Systems.

The Chennai-based team of IC Universal Legal acted as legal advisors for Annapurna Finance and assisted on the deal documentation and negotiation of the investment agreements, led by principal associate Kavita Pancjoli and associate Sumedha Giridharan.

Update 10 January 2019: AZB & Partners advised Oman Indian Joint Investment Fund II (OIJIF II) led by a team of partners Ashwin Ramanathan, Rinki Ganguli and Ami Parikh and lawyers Puneet Parihar and Kanika Mishra.

Promoted by social activist Gobinda Pattanaik and having a portfolio of over Rs 2,000 crores, Annapurna Finance is one of the leaders in microfinance in eastern India, serving more than 1.2 million borrowers through a network of more than 400 branches across 14 states. The NBFC, primarily focussed and engaged in providing micro loans to women borrowers in rural India for income-generating activities, expects to diversify their micro-finance portfolio by infusing the fresh funds into newer asset classes such as lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and housing finance along with investing in technology to increase operational efficiency.

2018-06-06

This deal report is based on a firm's press release and may be only partially complete. Some firms or names of advisers may be therefore be missing.