Bengaluru, Nov. 28 -- Billionaire N. R. Narayan Murthy's family office, Catamaran Ventures, plans to make more growth-stage equity bets in manufacturing, a top executive at the firm said on Wednesday. "Our thesis is based on the view that over the next 5-10 years in India, from a wealth and job creation perspective, the country needs to develop its supply chain for precision manufacturing," Deepak Padaki, president, Catamaran Ventures, said. Murthy, a co-founder of information technology services bellwether Infosys Ltd, is chairman emeritus of Catamaran. Over the last year, several funds have been deepening their focus on manufacturing as a sector, with some launching new funds to narrow down on the industry's potential. Much of this is backed by private equity and venture capital's belief that manufacturing and supply chain companies are going to be what pushes India to become an export-led economy. "Themes like import substitution (for EMS), rising domestic consumption (for packaging, building materials) and India's emergence as an export hub (for chemicals, auto, engineered solutions, aerospace and defense) are providing structural long-term impetus to companies," said Koushik Bhattacharyya, MD and head of industrials investment banking at Mumbai investment bank Avendus Capital. (EMS is short for electronic manufacturing services.) Catamaran has so far made two investments in the manufacturing space, both of which are headed for the public markets: precision aerospace component manufacturer Aequs and SEDEMAC, a mechatronics maker looking to raise up to Rs.1,000 crore through an offer for sale. Catamaran has also invested in point-of-care medical diagnostics company Achira Labs. The family office sees supply chain manufacturing firms as not a good fit with typical venture capital bets given the long gestation period for such businesses. Most generalist VC funds look for exits in a five- to six-year horizon. Manufacturing, which is considered a sub-sector of deeptech given the changing nature of the activity and patents around it, take as long as 10-15 years to come of some scale. For private equity to back such startups, on the other hand, they need them to be more mature businesses. "We're more mid-market private equity when it comes to manufacturing. We thought about how we as a family office can put money into companies that is patient capital," said Padaki. Catamaran is focused on a few areas within manufacturing: aerospace, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the EV space, medical devices and semiconductor companies. The family office sees defence as "interesting" while on the lookout for companies that have achieved some scale and can be taken global-of which it has seen very few. Even on the aerospace side, apart from Aequs, despite Catamaran's desire to do more in the coming year, the pipeline is looking thin. There's more action in electric vehicle (EV) OEMs, however. "There's a lot of small component manufacturers in places such as NCR (Delhi region) and Coimbatore that are promoter-owned who are switching to EVs because we already have a strong base in auto component manufacturing," said Padaki. "We're more interested in EV supply chain components such as motors, electronic systems, that kind of thing."...