Posted on November 14, 2008 - by James

India: SKS Raises 75m USD in Fourth Round…

The round is led by Sandstone Capital, an India focused hedge fund, and is largest investment in an MFI.

In the largest microfinance deal in the world, Hyderabad based SKS Microfinance has raised Rs 366 crore or $75 million from private equity investors. This is fourth round of fund raising by SKS. Sandstone Capital, an India focused hedge fund with $1 billion capital under management, has led the deal, while the other investors in this round include SVB India Capital and Kismet Capital.

This is the largest investment in a micro finance institution anywhere in the world, said SKS Microfinance founder CEO Vikram Akula. Since October last year the MFI has raised Rs 563 crore in three rounds of funding.

“We are  going to be using these funds to leverage access to commercial finance and scale of our outreach in next two years,” said Akula. SKS currently has 1,400 branches with 12,000 employees, and Akula plans to double that in the next two years. He also said that microfinance remains largely unaffected from the global economic meltdown… [click here to read the rest of this article...]