NIIF takes first step towards building its portfolio in roads & highways sector; acquires 2 Essel projects

National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) takes first step towards building its portfolio in the roads and highways sector! The NIIF, through the NIIF master fund, has acquired Essel Devanahalli Tollway and Essel Dichpally Tollway. These road infra projects will be managed by Athaang Infrastructure, the proprietary roads platform of NIIF, backed by an experienced professionals’ team with rich domain expertise in the transportation sector, according to a PTI report. A strategic arterial 22 km long six-lane toll road in the state of Karnataka, Essel Devanahalli connects Bengaluru city and its airport. While Essel Dichpally is a 60 km long four-lane toll road in the state of Telangana.

Essel Devanahalli road, part of National Highway-44 (erstwhile National Highway-7), with an operational history of more than six years, is well poised to cater to the growing needs of Karnataka’s capital and its airport. Also, it will benefit from the growth potential of Bengaluru city as a metropolitan. On the other hand, Essel Dichpally is a mature asset, that has been operational for over seven years. According to NIIF, this road is a crucial link between two key industrial hubs, Nagpur and Hyderabad as well as serves long distance commercial traffic.

Besides the road sector platform, the Master Fund of NIIF has anchored platforms in the renewables, ports and logistics, as well as energy smart meters sectors. In the container logistics and domestic supply chain management business, Hindustan Infralog Private Limited, NIIF’s ports and logistics platform, is amongst the leading players. According to NIIF, 1.1 GW of greenfield capacity is being developed by Ayana Renewables and also, it is actively evaluating acquisitions. It further stated that in the energy smart meter sector, IntelliSmart is the market leader, which is aggressively working towards meeting the government’s target of installing 250 million smart meters.

According to Vinod Giri, Managing Partner, NIIF, Athaang Infrastructure will invest in strategic assets as well as develop a portfolio including annuities/hybrid annuities, mature operational assets, large size expressways and highways with brownfield and greenfield expansion needs. The objective of Athaang Infrastructure is to emerge as the preferred partner for stakeholders in the Indian roads sector, he added.