MUMBAI: National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) on Monday announced the first close of its second infrastructure fund at Rs 19,000 crore ($2 billion), crossing 60% of its target corpus of Rs 30,000 crore ($3.2 billion).
The fund is anchored by the Government of India and backed by a mix of global and Indian institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance companies and financial institutions.
Global investors participating in the fund include AustralianSuper, CPP Investments, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Temasek. Indian investors include ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Life Insurance and HDFC Life Insurance.
NIIF expects to mobilise an additional Rs 9,000 crore ($950 million) in co-investment capital alongside the fund, allowing investors to participate in select transactions at scale.
Infrastructure Fund II will invest in core sectors such as energy, transport and digital infrastructure, while expanding its focus to emerging areas including urban infrastructure and electric mobility.
The fund builds on NIIF’s first infrastructure fund, which raised Rs 16,000 crore and invested across renewables, transmission, distribution, battery storage, roads, ports and logistics, airports, data centres and smart metering.
NIIF said the strong participation from existing investors in its first infrastructure fund reflected continued confidence in its investment strategy, governance standards and track record of building and scaling infrastructure businesses.
“Infrastructure Fund II reflects the continued confidence of our partners in India’s infrastructure opportunity and in NIIF’s ability to deploy long-term capital with discipline, sector expertise and strong governance,” said Sanjiv Aggarwal, managing director and CEO, NIIF.
Vinod Giri, managing partner, infrastructure, NIIF, said the second fund would build on the operating capabilities established through the first fund and focus on creating infrastructure platforms at scale.
NIIF, India’s sovereign-anchored alternative asset manager, manages more than $7 billion in equity capital commitments across four strategies — infrastructure, private markets, growth equity and climate investments.