Existing shareholders Pramod Bhasin and Anil Chawla have made a binding counter offer to acquire Aion Capital's 85% stake in Clix Capital at a valuation of ₹2,400 crore. According to merchant bankers aware of the deal, the consortium led by Bhasin and Chawla has mounted an employee-backed buyout of the Gurugram-based NBFC, which specializes in loans for MSMEs. The binding offer does not have any deadline of validity, as reported by Business Standard.
The counter offer comes weeks after Mumbai-based NBFC Protium Finance entered into exclusive negotiations in July to buy out Aion's stake at a valuation estimated between ₹1,900 crore and ₹2,200 crore. Chawla, a former managing director of US-based hedge fund D E Shaw India Advisory Service, and Bhasin, former CEO and president of leading IT and software consultancy Genpact, made the offer despite Protium's exclusive negotiations. The Bhasin-Chawla duo has also roped in institutional partners to help finance their bid, as reported by Business Standard.
With assets under management of around ₹8,000 crore, Clix Capital operates 28 branches across the country with over 1,000 employees. It is one of the market leaders in K-12 schools' financing, MSME loans, and loans against property. In 2016, Bhasin and Chawla teamed up with Aion Capital to buy out GE Money Financial Services, which was renamed Clix Capital. The NBFC has been on offer-for-sale since 2014 when Apollo mandated Barclays and Moelis to start the process to offload their 85% stake, as reported by Business Standard.
Despite multiple suitors including TVS Capital and Ugro Capital, deals could not be finalized due to differences over valuation and business strategy. The NBFC also made interesting merger attempts, including a non-binding offer of amalgamation with Laxmi Vilas Bank in 2020 after RBI rejected the bank's plan to merge with Indiabulls Housing Finance, though the deal did not fructify due to LVB's merger with DBS Bank. In 2021, it made another attempt of merger with Suryadoy Small Finance Bank, but that also did not work out, as reported by Business Standard.
