Private equity firm KKR and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan are topping up their investments in Highways Infrastructure Trust, an infrastructure investment trust that manages and operates highways across India.
The InvIT is raising a total of Rs 5,501 crore ($640 million) from KKR, OTPP and Mumbai-based merchant banking firm Trust Investment Advisors, stock-exchange filings show.
Of this, KKR will invest close to Rs 3,756 crore while OTPP will invest Rs 1,695.85 crore. Trust Investment Advisors will invest a little less than Rs 50 crore.
The fundraising comes barely months after the InvIT won a contract in September last year for a 252-km stretch of highways after it emerged as the highest bidder with a Rs 6,661 crore ($797 million) offer. The InvIT won the contract from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the government’s nodal agency for highways in the country, for a stretch on the Hyderabad-Nagpur corridor in the southern state of Telangana.
Highways Infra Trust currently owns, operates and maintains a portfolio of 13 road projects across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Meghalaya, Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.
KKR, which has about $624 billion of assets under management globally, first entered India's highways sector in late 2021 when it acquired the roads portfolio of US PE firm Global Infrastructure Partners. Since then, it has sealed several deals to buy assets from Macquarie, HG Infra Engineering Ltd and Navayuga.
The PE firm launched the InvIT in 2022. In April 2022, Canadian pension fund OTPP agreed to invest $175 million in the InvIT. In August that year, the InvIT mopped up Rs 4,155 crore through an initial offering of units. During FY24, the InvIT raised Rs 514 crore through a rights issue of units and Rs 2,190 crore through a preferential allotment of units. The InvIT struck a $1.1 billion deal in January last year to buy a bunch of assets from PNC Infratech.