Venture Capital firm Gaja Capital has invested in premium dining venture Massive Restaurants floated by popular Chef Jiggs Kalra and his son. The amount invested is said to be Rs 160 crores and with this equity induction, Gaja Capital has become a major minority shareholder in Massive Restaurants with the promoters, Jiggs Kalra and his son Zorawar Kalra remaining the majority shareholders, according to a report in Economic Times. Massive Restaurants have raised a total amount of Rs 220 crores of capital, including this round.
The fresh capital raised would go into expansion of its properties across many countries. Immediately on the table is a plan to launch 8 premium dining restaurants. These may be located in the Middle East, London and in the US. As a policy, Massive Restaurants may open one overseas restaurant for every two opened in India in the future.
“We have picked the premium dining route as our bet in the F&B space. We see premium dining as an opportunity of scale and we have chosen to be on the front end with Massive Restaurants. On the other hand in the QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) space we have chosen the supply chain B2B route with Baker’s Circle,” ET quotes Gopal Jain, managing partner of Gaja Capital as saying.
Zorawar told ET that having tasted success in the Indian market, its investments will now be geared towards international expansion in countries such as Middle East, London and US.
Talking of Gaja Capital, the investor, as mentioned above, has had an eventful year which included 3 exits. These were TeamLease, CL Educate and John Distilleries. It is being reported that in all these three companies, Gaja Capital made a killing earning many times over the initial investments made.
In fact, market observers point out that as the year is coming to a close, there have been many private equity firms in India which have tasted bumper profits from the investments they made by opting for exits at the most favorable moments. The figure being quoted is $1.1 billion through IPOs alone and this constitutes a 25% jump from the figure for 2016, which stood at $935 million.