NV Capital on Wednesday announced the launch of its maiden media & entertainment credit fund with a corpus of about $68 million (Rs 500 crore). The fund recently received a nod from Indian market regulator SEBI as Category II Alternative Investment Fund.
NV Capital is looking to raise funds from domestic as well as offshore investors such as financial institutions, HNIs, family offices and banks, it said in a statement.
“With the rapid rise of category II credit funds in India over the last few years, NV Capital is looking to establish a new alternative asset class in the media & entertainment space,” it added.
“The last 10-15 years has witnessed meteoric growth in this alternative asset class with the support of ancillary revenue monetisation platforms like broadcasting, music amongst others, and now the recent OTT phenomenon. The investment in programming by media houses in OTT more than doubled from $260 million in 2017 to $700 million in 2020,” Nitin Menon, co-founder & managing partner, NV Capital, said.
“Further, with the recent Amazon – MGM and the Warner – Discovery deal, the war for content manufacturing is getting bigger globally and India would be a recipient of these content spends as the next big market,” he added.
Founded by industry professionals and ex-bankers Nitin Menon and Vivek Menon, NV Capital will be also India’s first credit fund focused on the media and entertainment sector with the objective of investing in content creators, OTT platforms, gaming and entertainment startups.
“Basis our past experience in actively funding companies in this space over the last decade, we have created very robust and secure selection criteria for choosing successful investments and will invest through a structured debt mechanism in about 10-20 projects annually,” Vivek Menon, co-founder & managing partner, said.