Spark Capital to expand

Chennai: The Chennai-based boutique investment banking outfit Spark Capital Advisors (India) Private Limited plans to expand its reach. The Rs3-crore revenue company is planning to be present all the major southern cities.

"Foreign investors are keenly looking at the economic signals that are in favour of India. For one, asset creation is happening in Asian and Latin American countries and there is less of capital creation in the US. Secondly production and services will migrate to low cost economies over next two decades. Unless there is a political / military tilt to the contrary this trend will continue to happen. And finally, with the building of the infrastructure reaching the saturation point in the western world, it now countries like India that offers opportunities," says chief executive officer K Ramakrishnan.

According to him Spark Capital is active in industries like information technology enabled services (ITES), engineering, auto ancillaries, services and infrastructure.

"Though others players in the investment banking space are scaling up their operations there is still a space for boutique companies like Spark Capital," Ramakrishnan adds.

According to him, the two major problems that boutique companies face are: (a) scaling up which requires capital and (b) continue to advise companies that have grown up and has raised capital from the public.

"To a major part this problem could be sorted out by offering the entire suite of services on a regional basis. For investment banking companies of our size, relationship with clients is what fetches business." To have a firm relationship Spark Capital has recently started offering portfolio management services (PMS).