Calcutta, March 13: Daiwa Securities SMBC Co Ltd is planning to launch its second India-dedicated equity fund this year for Japanese investors. Daiwa Securities SMBC is the investment banking joint venture between Japan’s financial conglomerates Daiwa Securities Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.

“We launched our first such fund in 2005 with an investment corpus of $750 million. The asset under management of the fund will now be over $1 billion,” said Yoshihiro Hasegawa, Daiwa Securities SMBC’s chief representative in India, at a function organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce here today.

“We plan to launch a second fund this year for which discussions are at an advanced stage. The fund will primarily invest in listed information technology companies here,” he added.

Hasegawa, however, declined to give details of the amount the fund wanted to mobilise.

“The largest India equity fund launched by a Japanese asset management company so far was $1 billion and the smallest fund size was $200 million. That’s the range of fund sizes,” said Hasegawa, adding that Daiwa would try to mobilise as much money as possible for its fund.

The first India-dedicated equity fund was launched in Japan in 2004 and it mobilised $800 million.

Since then, Japanese asset management companies have floated 10 such funds with total assets under management of over $7 billion.