Financial services group Ariston Capital Services is setting up the Ariston IET Infrastructure Fund I with a target corpus of Rs 1,200 crore. The close-ended fund will have a green shoe option of Rs 300 crore. It will focus on investing in companies in the infrastructure and allied sectors.

The fund will target an initial close at Rs 500 crore and will have a tenure of seven years, Ariston Capital managing director Ram Khanna said without mentioning the time frame for the first close.

“We have received Sebi’s approval, and have started the process of fundraising. Our target investors, including domestic financial institutions, banks, corporates and select UHNIs (ultra high net worth individuals), have shown interest in participating in the fund. We are expecting to reach our first close by the year-end,” Khanna said.

Ariston Capital is a consolidated financial services group with interests in mergers and acquisitions, private equity placement, management advisory and financial markets.

The fund team comprises professionals with managerial experience in infrastructure project development, banking, infrastructure lending, private equity and financial advisory fields. Shirish Navlekar, CEO of Ariston Infrastructure Fund I, is the ex-CFO of the Delhi airport.

Sunil Tandon, joint managing director of Ariston group, said: “The need of the hour is to introduce transparency and corporate governance in the private equity sector. The Ariston IET Fund has no loading of costs to investors. Also, revenues to fund managers have been back-ended, and they will receive their share of profits only after the entire corpus of the fund and the hurdle rate have been paid back to investors. This will align interests of the fund managers with the performance of the fund.”