Private Equity Sees Opportunity in India’s Green-Tech Industry

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Dec. 16 – Northern Lights Capital Group, a U.S.-based private equity firm, announced today that it invested in Nereus Capital, a private equity firm specifically targeting renewable energy opportunities in India. Terms of the transaction were left undisclosed.

“Among emerging markets, India is one of the most attractive places to deploy private equity capital,” Managing Director at Northern Lights Tim Carver was quoted as saying in a company press release.

In the coming years, India is expected to invest over US$30 billion in renewable energy technology, with electricity demand growing at roughly 8 percent a year, according to the statement.

“The build-out of green technology infrastructure is a long-term global trend that we believe will continue to create investment opportunities for private equity,” said Carver. “Within that context, India, with the unique economics of its energy market, can provide excellent risk-adjusted returns for equity financing of green infrastructure.”

With the hunger for investments in emerging markets growing, private-equity deals directed toward Indian assets seem to be increasing in both frequency and in significance over the past decade.

In 2005, India saw a US$560 million dollar trade between two private equity firms—still the largest stock trade in India’s history—executed in just 26 minutes.

“No one realized the Indian market had so much depth or maturity,” said Manisha Girotra, then the chairman and managing director of UBS India, the firm that executed the trade for one of the private-equity companies involved in the deal. “Or that there was such an appetite for India.”