UK-based emerging markets specialist Ashmore Investment Management and PTC India, formerly known as the Power Trading Corporation of India, have officially unveiled their new energy fund, which aims to raise $750 million to invest in energy projects across India.
The fund aims to provide equity for energy projects across the power generation, transmission, distribution and fuel extraction and transport sectors, Ashmore said in a statement. The joint vehicle also aims to capitalise on India’s peak power deficit of 12 percent, which the country is trying to plug partly through private investment.
Ashmore said the close-ended fund will target a return of 20 percent over its 10-year maturity and is looking to attract local institutional investors. The fund has seed capital of at least INR5 billion ($107 million; €72 million), which resulted from an issue by PTC India last May on the Mumbai stock exchange of 66.7 million shares at INR75 per share.
As previously reported on InfrastructureInvestor.com, the fund will invest in “needy” projects, thereby speeding up their financial closure. Last May, Tantra Narayan Thakur, chairman and managing director of PTC India, told Reuters the fund would buy up to 30 percent equity stakes in private power projects, which will sell power through the company’s power trading facilities.
Based in New Delhi, PTC India provides long- and short-term power sale solutions as well as providing equity support to energy projects.
Ashmore is a London Stock Exchange-listed fund manager. The firm’s strategies include private equity, distressed debt, US dollar-denominated debt, local currency-denominated debt, public equities and corporate high yield.
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