SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd is working on putting together a private equity fund, with a corpus of “hundreds of millions of dollars,” that would be utilised to provide equity and debt to infrastructure projects in India, Saud Siddique, Joint Managing Director, SREI Infrastructure, told Business Line on Friday.
“We are working on it. We are talking to investors who understand SREI's business,” he said.
Siddique, who joined SREI about six months ago, comes with a rich experience in handling infrastructure projects in the US and Singapore.
He has worked for IFC, Washington, and was Group Executive Vice-President, Global Infrastructure, Hyflux Ltd, Singapore.
He has put together a team of people to provide a fillip to infrastructure financing at SREI.
Meanwhile, SREI Infrastructure is closer to signing a deal for a $100-million line of credit from three multilateral lenders.
The company had announced in March that FMO would lend $100 million to SREI for infrastructure financing.
But now, although FMO is front-ending the deal, there will be two other lenders – DEG of Germany and Proparco, a French lender, it is learnt. “It is a FMO-led syndicate,” Siddique said.
The funds would be available to SREI for long-term – about seven to 10 years. SREI intends to utilise the funds for lending to medium-sized infrastructure projects in India.
Siddique said that SREI was primarily interested in medium-sized projects such as those in the areas of wind farms, small hydel projects and solar projects.
Two other businesses support SREI Infrastructure's ambitions to become a leading lender of project finance.
SREI Capital Markets Ltd will help project sponsors get equity funds. The company is trying to position itself in equity and debt syndication, M&A and disinvestment, in the area of infrastructure, Siddique said.
The other related company is SREI Venture Capital, which has invested Rs 250 crore and is now looking to exit from the ventures.
There are six investee companies and the SREI expects good returns from the exits. This business will also be developed, Siddique added.
Source: Sify