ETMarkets AIF Talk- Lot of family offices and UHNIs are now actively investing in these bond strategies: Mohamed Irfan

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

“Lot of family offices and UHNIs are now actively investing in these bond strategies, and over the years it has become much more mainstream for capital allocators,” saysMohamed Irfan, Fund Manager at Vivriti AMC. In an interview with ETMarkets along with PMSBazzar, Irfan said: “A typical HNI/UHNI, depending on age and other goals – can allocate somewhere between 10% -20% in alternates. Within that, there could be private equity, venture capital etc.” Edited excerpts: Thanks for being part of the segment. Vivriti has a wide variety of fund catering to the credit market. Tell us more about the Mid-Market Performing Credit space and how you are addressing the financing gap in India? From our view, companies that have a good amount of vintage, profitability, and a proven business model form the bulk of the mid-market performing credit space.

Some proxies for the same include evidence of being able to weather economic cycles, having good banking lines, and a stable credit rating. This space is quite different from the traditional high-yield asset classes of promoter finance, loan against shares, distressed debt, venture debt, real estate financing etc.

We track a list of about 4000 companies which fit our parameters. The challenge is mostly in being able to carve out a diversified portfolio by actively covering these entities through origination efforts, and then be able to structure credit solutions which make sense for them.

It is also rapidly expanding but due to their size, these companies get almost no attention from capital markets and are subject to a “templatized” approach by other formal lenders. This forms the basis of the structural gap which we are addressing through our investments.You have deployed more than INR