Mark Silgardo

Mark Silgardo is a Senior Managing Partner at IL&FS Investment Managers Limited (IIML), the private equity fund-management subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services. He brings more than 28 years of financial-services experience. Early in his career he spent over a decade on the corporate-banking side of two multinational banks, Banque Nationale de Paris and ANZ Grindlays, before moving into investment banking.

He subsequently headed Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, one of India's largest domestic investment banks, and then served as Managing Director of Corporate Finance at ABN Amro and later at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In those roles he led M&A transactions with deal sizes ranging from roughly US$25 million to US$500 million across sectors as diverse as telecommunications, media, fast-moving consumer goods and oil & gas.

Prior to joining IIML, Silgardo set up the Investment Banking division of IndusInd Bank, a leading Indian private-sector bank. He was also involved in M&A and fund-raising strategy and execution for various Hinduja Group companies spanning telecommunications, media, ITES, real estate and pharmaceuticals, as well as in the structuring of a proposed fund-management business. Since June 2006 he has run IIML's growth private equity fund, which invests in rapidly growing mid-sized companies across a wide range of sectors.

He holds an MBA in International Finance from the University of Rochester, New York, and completed postgraduate studies in Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

• Invests growth / expansion capital in mid-market Indian companies — his own firm describes the strategy as "providing capital to middle-market companies to fund their growth plans."
• Stated fund mandate: "From June 2006, Mr Silgardo has been running the growth private equity fund which invests in rapidly growing mid sized companies across a wide range of sectors."
• Typical deployment through Tara India Fund III (US$225M) was roughly US$8M–US$20M per company, across ~13 investments in six target industries: Infrastructure, Consumer Services, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Infrastructure Services and Agriculture.
• Predecessor vehicle, the Leverage India Fund (US$153M, 2004), focused on late-stage funding for profitable, cash-generating companies with a stable, consistent cash-flow history and upside potential from expansion.
• Says yes to companies with proven cash generation, credible expansion plans, and the ability to absorb minority growth capital — reflecting an investment-banker's discipline around deal structuring and downside protection rather than early-stage bets.