Roads and infrastructure developer Ashoka Buildcon Ltd is set to offload a portfolio of 11 road projects to Sekura Roads, an infrastructure platform owned by the Edelweiss Infrastructure Yield Plus (EIYP) fund, in a Rs 2,324-crore, or $272 million, deal.
The deal, which had reportedly been in the works since June 2023, will see Sekura acquire the operational hybrid annuity model (HAM) road projects from Ashoka Buildcon and its subsidiary Ashoka Concessions Ltd.
The road projects, which are housed across 11 different special purpose vehicles, will be acquired by Concesiones 2 Pvt Ltd, Infrastructure Yield Plus II and Infrastructure Yield Plus IIA (both schemes of Infrastructure Yield Trust and managed by their respective investment manager, EAAA India Alternatives Ltd, which was formerly known as Edelweiss Alternative Asset Advisors Ltd).
The roads being acquired are spread across Punjab, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Of the 11 roads, four are owned by Ashoka Buildcon and the remaining seven are owned by Ashoka Concessions.
Even as Ashoka Buildcon has offloaded this portfolio of 11 roads, it has been looking to bag other bigger projects. Just last month it got a letter of award from the National Highways Authority of India for a Rs 1,391-crore project that involves development of a four-lane corridor in West Bengal, under the HAM model.
Apart from Sekura Roads, EIYP also has another project management arm Sekura Energy. EIYP itself was floated in 2017 by Edelweiss Alternative Advisors Ltd, a subsidiary of the Mumbai-based financial services firm Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd.
Sekura Roads first stuck a deal in June 2020 when it acquired two roads--one each in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh--for $150 million from the Navayuga Group.
Then, in December 2022, it acquired a portfolio of eight road projects as part of a deal to buy L&T IDPL. In between, it also bought two more road assets. Then, in October last year it acquired a road asset in Meghalaya from IL&FS Transportation for Rs 1,343 crore.