With a Rs 300-crore corpus IDFC AMC looks out for projects

Chennai: With his clean-shaven head and bearded face, Luis Miranda, chief executive officer, IDFC Asset Management Company, is not a man of contradictions. “I shaved my head five years ago in deference to my wife’s wishes. Ever since I sport this style as she likes it,” Miranda laughs.

A born optimist, always straining to see the positive side in a dark situation, Miranda is a chartered accountant and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago. “Why do you look at file-pushing bureaucrats? Look at the IAS officials who are action-oriented. Well, they may be small in numbers but it is worth focussing on them,” he says.

It is this optimism that is going to hold him in good stead as he is going to invest in equities of long-gestation core-sector projects. Miranda, today, is sitting over a corpus of Rs 300 crore — all set to go up to Rs 1,000 crore — under the name India Development Fund (IDF) and managed by IDFC Asset Management Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (IDFC).

India’s first ‘equity-only fund,’ to focus on infrastructure projects, has got firm commitments from institutions like Life Insurance Corporation of India, State Bank of India, General Insurance Corporation, Bank of Baroda and IDFC. “We hope to raise another Rs 200 crore and conclude our first investment deal by June 2003,” says Miranda.

According to Miranda IDF will invest in industrial infrastructure (road, telecom, ports, special economic zones) and social infrastructure (health, education, tourism) and rural infrastructure (food distribution) projects. With people like Miranda bringing in private equity experience and IDFC notching up a good name in infrastructure funding, IDF is ideally placed to assist core-sector projects.