All-weather, purposeful investment strategies
We invest on behalf of our accredited investors, including private clients, and some of the world's largest institutional investors, such as pension funds, sovereign funds, and insurance companies, to drive economic and sustainable impact. Our responsible, diversified investment strategies allow our investors to benefit from differentiated growth opportunities across all market cycles, focusing on capital preservation and attractive risk-adjusted returns. As a global investment company, we have teams in Singapore, Dubai, and India. We drive value creation by applying high-quality processes and superior governance standards along with a robust risk management framework.
Private credit represents a rapidly growing non-traditional asset class within the broader alternatives universe. In today’s challenging markets, this asset class offers investors key benefits such as diversification, yield enhancement driven by structuring, and some degree of illiquidity risk premiums.
Private credit covers a broad spectrum of investments. We specialize in direct lending over short-term and long-term investment horizons, offering structured working capital financing, bridge financing, corporate debt, and venture debt. Our credit strategy encompasses developed and developing markets in multiple sectors such as infrastructure, shipping, construction, and new age resilient sectors led by the boom of technology and e-commerce. Our investments drive the growth of start-ups, SMEs, and mid-market corporates by addressing their financing needs resulting in progressive impacts for the region.
Venture debt is a form of financing suited for high-growth startups that have high working capital requirements but lack tangible assets or sufficient cash flows to access traditional bank lending. It is fundamentally a founder-friendly and comparatively cheaper financing option, as it helps the founders avoid overdiluting their equity at early stages of their company’s growth. By enhancing liquidity, venture debt can also help companies navigate unforeseen market volatility or bridge short-term capital traps.
In India and South East Asia (SEA), two of the most vibrant startup ecosystems in the world, venture debt is still at an early stage and has yet to catchup with US where venture debt has been around for over 50 years. With the VC investment activity in these regions now gaining pace, the time is ripe for venture debt to pick up. Over the next 3-5 years, the region presents a compelling growth story with a US$6 - 7 billion annual deployment opportunity in venture debt.
Coupled with our other funds and expertise in private markets, such as LC Nueva (Venture Capital) and LC Supply Chain (Private Credit), our international investments teams are committed to partnering with promising early-stage businesses and supporting their growth over the years.
India has witnessed exponential growth in internet penetration over the last decade, with over 700 million users accessing the internet. This digital reach has led to the emergence of technologically enabled businesses solving conventional problems in innovative ways.
The Indian start-up ecosystem is amongst the top three globally. It has emerged as one of the most attractive investment opportunities, resulting in substantial foreign and domestic venture capital flows into India. Our venture capital team has years of experience investing in high-quality start-ups in the early stages of the growth curve and managing these investments throughout the investment lifecycle. We play a vital role in helping these companies enhance performance by bringing capital, strategic insights, global relationships, and operational support, thereby unlocking value and leading to the most rewarding returns in the long run for our investors.
Our real estate investment strategy is one-of-the-kind in Asia, focusing on life sciences real estate facilities. In partnership with Ivanhoe Cambridge, a real estate subsidiary of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s leading institutional fund managers, we invest in and operate high-quality life sciences real estate assets. Our investment contributes to innovation in life sciences driven by rapid advancements in science and technology.
Our investment approach targets assets with predictable cash flows and potential for capital appreciation to generate long-term performance. Over the years, we have successfully built a portfolio of life sciences R&D assets through a mix of greenfield and brownfield investments, which has since become the largest privately-owned portfolio of its kind in South Asia, demonstrating our conviction in this investment strategy. We started our thematic investing in life sciences real estate in 2016, acquiring the Real Estate Portfolio, located in India, from Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc.
Our life sciences real estate assets have a low vacancy risk driven by the long-term leases to marquee global life sciences multinational corporations and large domestic pharma companies. These assets provide investors with an opportunity to earn attractive, stable, and rising yields (through rental escalations) with low beta and low correlation to economic cycles. Changing demographics, higher life expectancy, growing income levels, and increasing healthcare spending will continue to contribute to the life science sector's rapid growth and innovation focus, driving demand for Life Sciences focused Real Estate.
India, being one of the fastest-growing economies globally, is expected to have the world’s largest working population by 2030. Higher purchasing power, improving social outcomes, and increasing domestic demand have contributed to its sustained growth - from FY2022 to 2024, its average GDP growth rate is projected to be between 8% to 8.5%. Over the last few years, supportive government reforms have aimed to transform India into a manufacturing hub for the world. With these factors, investing in India is a compelling option.
The SageOne India Growth Master Fund offers investors an unparalleled opportunity to invest in the India growth story. The Fund aims to capitalize on this opportunity by investing in highly profitable businesses poised to witness long-term structural and sustainable growth with an uncompromised focus on management and corporate governance as the bedrock of its investment philosophy. With a concentrated portfolio of 12-20 high conviction stocks in the small & mid-cap space across multiple sectors, the Fund offers sustainable value to our investors over the long term.
Investors need true diversifiers for their portfolios beyond traditional assets that provide consistent returns focusing on capital preservation. We use active treasury portfolio management, creating access to local markets and capturing market dislocations through trading asset swaps, capturing arbitrages, and holding fixed-income assets. We implement a dual-strategy approach. First, through a ‘treasury book’ to generate steady accrual and arbitrage income; second, through a ‘trading book’ that enhances returns as risk capital for traditional macro strategies. The Fund, owing to its low volatility, limited downside risk, and low equity and bond market correlation, is best suited for investors whose primary objective is capital preservation.
This investment strategy is spearheaded by an experienced team with over 30 years of combined experience in fixed income & currency markets in global investment banks with deep expertise in market-making and proprietary trading roles.
We create and manage customized special-purpose vehicles unique to every investor's needs. Our ability to develop bespoke funds with a robust operational and risk governance framework enables institutions to create a capital-efficient investment structure. We provide tailored services at institutional pricing with a fully compliant investment process and transparency on all costs and fees to ensure complete alignment, disclosure & monitoring. We execute portfolio strategies, risk, trading, and operations functions providing maximum cost efficiency across multiple jurisdictions. We have exclusive access to top-tier institutional trading & risk management systems, including prime brokers, private banks, execution brokers, and specialist institutions.
