Flipkart, BYJU’S investor CPP says it doesn’t have 'big bang approach' when it comes to investing

Canada’s largest pension fund, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP) which has invested in prominent Indian start-ups such as edtech majors BYJU’S and Eruditus, e-commerce giant Flipkart, content platform DailyHunt, etc., doesn’t have any “big bang approach” when it comes to investing. Speaking at the IVCA Conclave in Mumbai, Prakul Kaushiva, Managing Director of Private Equity at CPP said that their portfolio has grown organically. 
 
“We didn’t start with a big bang approach. The portfolio has grown organically. Even the individual investment programs grew quite organically,” he revealed. 
 
Kaushiva also said that their investments are also quite diversified. “We are a large fund globally but also very diversified both across geographies and asset classes. We invest across public equities, private equities, real assets, credit, and capital market strategy,” he said.
 
Talking about region-specific investments, he highlighted that within Asia, they are focused on China, India and the regions which come under “developed Asia.”
 
Talking about investments in India, he says CPP’s experience has been “supremely positive.” He said that they entered India at a very opportune time and that is how they have been able to develop some very successful partnerships. 
 
“Our performance has been strong,” he said without disclosing any India-specific numbers.
 
He noted that the investment philosophy of the fund is quite simple. “We take a very active management approach towards investing. Being on the front foot especially when it comes to sourcing origination, diligence, execution.”
 
In recent times, the Toronto-based firm has made capital allocation decisions to back IIFL Wealth and IndoSpace’s new real estate fund and exercised an exit from L&T Infrastructure Development Projects Limited (L&T IDPL) in the third quarter of fiscal 2023 in India. 
 
During the quarter, CPP Investments made an investment of $53 million for a 2.7 per cent stake in IIFL Wealth, a wealth and asset management firm in India, alongside Bain Capital Asia. The company ended the third quarter of fiscal 2023 on December 31, 2022, with net assets of $536 billion, compared to $529 billion at the end of the previous quarter. 

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