ASK Group is shaping up like Blackstone
Blackstone-backed ASK Group recently announced a foray into the hedge funds and private credit businesses saying it plans to grow its assets to $5 billion in the next four to five years. Sunil Rohokale, MD and chief executive at ASK Group talks to Raghavendra Kamath about the Group’s strategy.
Several global and domestic fund managers are getting into private credit, isn’t this space getting overcrowded?
What was the idea behind getting into hedge funds?
“Long short “funds are an investment style to generate risk- adjusted returns for investors. ASK has traditionally been a “long only” investment manager and to complement this, we are getting into “long short” funds. It is also a diversification of investment portfolio for our long only investors as a long -short fund, amongst other things, also offers the advantage of hedging against a changing market environment and other trends leading to increased volatility.
How has Blackstone’s entry as a majority owner helped ASK scale up the business?
Blackstone as we know is the world’s largest private equity investor with 0ne trillion dollar AUM and its diversified into performing credit , hedge funds, real estate and Private equity. ASK is also shaping up in that direction. Backed by Blackstone, we are scaling up in public equities, real estate funds and venturing into credit funds and long short funds.
The Blackstone brand is giving additional fillip to ASK to access the large investor base both onshore and offshore markets. You get a different welcome when you go to investors now and it will help us significantly increase our AUM in the next three to five years.Blackstone did help us diversify into credit fund , long short funds after we strategized with them. Once our credit fund and hedge fund business stabilise, we may look at PE, in the mid-market space.
What happened to your plans for the mutual funds business?
Since Blackstone is a majority owner, we have an option to pursue brownfield opportunity. We want to acquire a mutual fund company rather than wait for 10 years to build it. In the last two years we explored the buyouts of two mid-sized and established mutual funds. One, we felt was an expensive deal and during the other we were undergoing a corporate action so we could not participate.
Where are Ultra HNIs and HNIs are investing today ?
About 65% of their money went is invested in public equities. Their interest in market- linked debentures and fixed income instruments has diminished after the tax incentives were taken away. Now they are allocating more to private credit, real estate, REITs and InVITs apart from their continued interest in public equities.
What are your plans for real estate funds ?
We have raised Rs 1500 crore in April this year and will deploy about 90% by March 2024. We received an approval for a fund of similar quantum a month ago and plan to raise approximately Rs 1,000 crore by March 2024 and close the fund in the next 12 months.
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