Renuka Ramnath in US Banker's top 25 non-bank finance CEOs

03 October 2008

ICICI Venture Funds' managing director and CEO Renuka Ramnath has been ranked among the Top 25 non-bank women in finance by US Banker magazine.

Quoting CNBC to describing Ramnath, an engineering graduate with an MBA in finance and an advanced management programme from Harvard Business School, as the "mother of private equity in India", US Banker said, "Some of the ICICI Venture's recent noteworthy returns came as a result of Ramnath's "conscious decision to exit from a few very large investments before the current market situation presented itself, thus making supernormal profits for all investors."

"Focusing on nurturing entrepreneurial Indian companies, Ramnath has produced outsized returns for her investors," the magazine noted.

All through the finacial market turmoil profit after taxes rose 39 per cent in fiscal year 2007 over 2006; in the year ending in March 2008 - a year that will go down in history for the collapse of Wall Street - profit was up 29 per cent. For investors, the growth has been prodigious as well; for example, ICICI Venture's India Advantage Fund, a $267 million fund raised in 2003, has realised an internal rate of return of 73 per cent to all its investors.

"Ramnath took over the fund in 2001 and promptly changed its focus from venture funding to mid- and late-stage growth deals and buyouts," the magazine said.

In 2003 the fund had $50 million in assets under management; by 2007 that number had grown to $2.4 billion and ICICI Venture Funds had grown from a pure-play private equity fund to a full-fledged asset management firm.