Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) will complete the process of raising funds for its India Infrastructure Fund (IIF) in a fortnight, said Vikram Pant, managing director, IDFC Project Equity, which manages the fund.
The equity-only fund's original target was $1.2 billion. Pant said IIF has committed nearly $270 million of the corpus.
IIF first invested $80 million in 4 road projects and then in March invested $70 million in Essar Power. In April, it committed $50 million for 2 special purpose vehicles floated by Nashik based Ashoka Buildcon. The fund is taking a stake in Sabarmati Gas, a gas distribution firm jointly promoted by Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), and in another public sector unit (PSU) in the coming months.
“By the end of this fiscal, we will have invested a substantial part of the corpus,” said Pant.IIF focuses on core infrastructure areas such as power generation, transmission & distribution, toll roads and telecom towers, among others. “We are not into real estate and want to focus on strong concession-backed assets,” Pant said.
IIF is part of the $5 billion India Infrastructure Financing Initiative announced in early 2007 by IDFC, Citigroup, Blackstone Group LP and India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL). The initiative was to have a $2 billion equity component and $ 3 billion debt portion.
Blackstone later pulled out due to differences with its partners.
IIF, which is registered with the Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi), is the first equity fund of the initiative. IDFC has raised $100 million for IIF and IIFCL $25 million. The fund has a host of other domestic and international investors, including pension funds.
Source: DNA India