International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private investment arm of the World Bank, is investing up to $25 million (about Rs 111 crore) in Clean Resources Asia Growth Fund, a $200-million clean technology fund floated by CLSA Capital Partners Ltd, VCCircle has learnt. IFC will take final decision about the investment at its board meeting scheduled on June 15, 2010.
The fund plans to invest in diversified portfolio within clean technology sectors in the Asia-Pacific region. The sectors include pollution and waste management technologies, water and waste water solutions, sustainable agriculture technologies, energy efficiency technologies and investments in supply chain for alternative energy.
CLSA is considering about 10-12 investments from the corpus with a ticket size of between $10 million and $30 million.
Though the fund does not have any geographic allocations, it is believed that a majority of the investments (around 50%) will be in China and India. It will also invest around 30% in other developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand and the remaining 20% in developed countries in Asia-Pacific such as Japan and South Korea.
Clean Resources Asia Growth Fund was launched in the fourth quarter of 2009. Besides this newly launched growth fund, CLSA Capital runs four other funds focusing investments in water and waste management space, with over $2.6 billion in assets under management.
IFC, on the other hand, which focuses investments in clean energy and other socially and environmentally relevant sectors, has announced three private equity investments in this month. It earlier announced $1.25 million in Husk Power Systems and $15 million in Aavishkaar Goodwell India Microfinance Development Company Ltd. It has also announced $75 million debt funding in Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd (IDFC) recently.
