Expect 6-8 Gw of renewable projects in the market soon: Virescent CEO

Virescent Infrastructure, which has floated the only infrastructure investment trust (INVIT) in the Indian renewable energy sector, expects 6-8 Gw of assets to be available in the market in the next six months.

Set up in 2020, the Kkrbacked firm raised ~460 crore from foreign and domestic investors in its first round of funding last month.

The INVIT — Virescent Renewable Energy Trust (VRET) — was floated in February this year.

“The fundraising was to meet the Sebi regulations for a privately listed INVIT, which required a minimum ~400 crore dilution and bringing in a minimum of five investors outside the sponsor KKR. We witnessed an oversubscription and we had to increase the size of the offering to ~460 crore to accommodate the minimum investment requirements of certain investors,” Virescent CEO Sanjay Grewal told Business Standard.

The offering was led by AIMCO, one of the largest pension funds from Canada.

Grewal said the fundraising and a AAA rating will help the firm reach 2 Gw target much sooner than FY24. “We are the first RE platform to get a dual AAA rating. Our AAA rating will allow us to raise debt funding from multiple sources such as banks, financial institutions, pension funds, insurance firms, etc at competitive rates and terms,” he said.

Grewal said there is a great opportunity in the Indian renewable market. “There are several types of sellers currently in the market — financial sponsors who wish to exit the RE market, conglomerates who have RE projects as their non-core business, corporates having de-leveraging considerations and developers who work on a capital churn or a ‘build and flip’ model,” he said.