Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) has joined National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) incubated Aseem Infrastructure Finance Limited (AIFL) as a strategic investor with a 10% stake.
The NIIF in a statement on Friday said that AIFL in collaboration with its associate NIIF Infrastructure Finance (NIIF IFL) will help address the country’s need in growing infrastructure debt. AIFL was incubated by NIIF via its strategic opportunities fund (SOF).
The company said that the two NBFCs have jointly disbursed over Rs 10,000 crore in YTD FY22. Both entities are regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and have strong governance structures and experienced management teams.
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is one of Japan's well-known banks and the core unit of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG).
The NIIF SOF, which holds a majority stake in both NIIF IFL and AIFL, invests in building future-ready businesses across a range of opportunities in diverse sectors such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, education, and other sun-rise sectors.
“NIIF Debt Platform was set up with an intent to be a large-scale infrastructure financier with the ability to attract leading international and domestic institutions as partners in its journey.
We warmly welcome this investment by SMBC, which is the first by a foreign investor in AIFL and look forward to jointly scaling AIFL to be a sustainable, well-governed and scaled-up infrastructure lender," said Prakash Rao, Chairman, Aseem Infrastructure Finance.
"AIFL has built out a strong management team led by Virender Pankaj, an infrastructure debt industry veteran, and has already built a diversified portfolio with an ambition to be among the largest players in the sector," he added.
