The Hindu : ICRA picks up stake in Online IndiaCapital

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 04, 2003

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ICRA picks up stake in Online IndiaCapital

By Our Staff Correspondent

MUMBAI JULY 3. Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency (ICRA) has picked up a 33 per cent equity stake in Online IndiaCapital.com Ltd., the Mumbai-based promoter of MutualFundsIndia.com. Through this acquisition, ICRA seeks to widen its role in the Indian mutual funds industry which it already services with products such as Grading of Mutual Funds and the Moody's/ICRA MF Management Style Indices. Moody's Investors Service, the international rating agency, is already ICRA's largest shareholder. The balance 67 per cent is held by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and promoters.

Online IndiaCapital.com Ltd. whose website MutualFundsIndia.com was rated among `Best of the Web' in the world by Forbes in its list of 150 best websites in 2000, is also a content vendor for the World Bank for the past two years.

In May 2000, Online IndiaCapital.com Ltd. received venture funding assistance from the National Venture Fund for Software and IT industry set up by the SIDBI in association with the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

P. K. Choudhury, Managing Director, ICRA, said, "The acquisition of equity stake is an expression of our interest in the Mutual Funds sector and seeks to establish synergy between ICRA's analytical expertise and Online IndiaCapital's capabilities in the online domain.''

Aditya Agarwal, director, Online IndiaCapital.com, said, "We have been thus far focusing only on mutual funds industry due to our small size. But now with ICRA, we will be venturing into other areas like products for the mutual funds industry, wealth management tools, web enabled products, insurance products, technical solutions and business process outsourcing.''

Mr. Choudhury further said, in two years time, ICRA would have the option to take a further 18 per cent in Online IndiaCapital.com to take its own stake to 51 per cent and make it a subsidiary of ICRA.

The tie-up will help ICRA in distribution of products and upgradation.

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