NR Narayana Murthy's Catamaran funds auto parts maker Sedemac

Time of India

23-04-2025

Infosys
founder NR
Narayana Murthy
's family office
Catamaran
has made an investment in Pune-based automotive electronic and electrical component maker
Sedemac Mechatronics
.
The financials of the transaction could not be ascertained.
'It was a secondary transaction. One of the early investors has exited and Catamaran has joined the cap table,' said a person privy to the development.
The secondary deal comes ahead of talks of a potential initial public offering (
IPO
) of Rs 800-1,000 crore.
While the exiting investor was not disclosed, its early investors include Nandan Nilekani-backed NRJN Family Trust, which invested in 2017, and growth investor Iron Pillar, which infused capital in 2018.
The Catamaran deal also comes along the lines of the potential growth seen in the domestic supply chain in precision manufacturing in India.
Its other investors include Xponentia Capital Partners, A91 Partners and 360 ONE Asset along with family offices of Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan and Mindtree co-founder NS Parthasarathy, Raintree Family Office of Leena Dandekar and logistics & courier company AFL Pvt Ltd's chairman and managing director Cyrus Guzder.
Both Catamaran and Sedemac founder Shashikanth Suryanarayanan declined to comment.
Catamaran has over $1 billion in assets with public and private investments across technology, manufacturing, deep tech and ecommerce. The family office has backed around 28 private firms including Acko, Udaan, PaperBoat and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Its most recent publicly known investment was in July 2024 in Bengaluru-headquartered Eton Solutions, a cloud-based software services firm for family offices.
Last year, Catamaran's president Deepak Padaki told ETabout the investor's strategy to focus on public market companies and plans to expand its portfolio with intelligent manufacturing startups focused on robotics, predictive analytics, maintenance, etc.
In May last year, Sedemac, the brand name under which the company operates, saw a $100 million (then around Rs 830 crore) investment round led by Xponentia Capital Partners, A91 Partners and 360 ONE Asset at a valuation of $230 million.
However, a majority of the funding was a secondary transaction with around $9 million of the investment infused into building a new manufacturing plant. That round saw the full exit of the company's first institutional investor Nexus Venture Partners along with TR Capital and Montane Ventures.
Since its inception in 2007, the company has raised nearly $26 million (around Rs 220 crore as on Tuesday's exchange rate).
Sedemac, an acronym for Separating Decision Making from Actuation, the principle behind mechatronics, was founded by IIT-Bombay professor Suryanarayanan and his lab students—Manish Sharma, Amit Dixit and Pushkaraj Panse.
The company makes critical components used to help generate power in automotive vehicles. Its products are used in small engines, electric vehicles and e-bikes.
Sedemac employs over 400 people and caters to large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in India, including
Hero Motocorp
, Mahindra Group and TVS. The firm has a development centre and two manufacturing plants in India.