NIIF has appointed investment bank JP Morgan to run a sale process for the roads portfolio, the sources said. Formal conversations are yet to begin, added the sources mentioned above on the condition of anonymity as these discussions are still in private domain. “This is one of the biggest road portfolios, value wise, to hit the market in recent times.” said one of the sources cited above. These operating road assets are housed under Athaang Infrastructure, a company sponsored by NIIF’s Master Fund. Athaang holds five assets with a total road length of over 230 kilometres spread across north and south India.
The key among these are two highways in Jammu and Kashmir acquired separately by the fund in 2022. The 16.3-kilometre Qazigund Banihal Expressway was acquired from Navayuga Engineering in July 2022 for $380 million (Rs 3,163 crore). Meanwhile, the 64.5-kilometre Jammu Udhampur Highway was acquired by Athaang in August 2022 from Shapoorji Pallonji Group for $290 million (Rs 2,414 crore).
The two projects are amongst the largest annuity projects awarded by the National Highways Authority of India. The fund operates the 73-kilometre Kashi Tollway in Uttar Pradesh that connects Prayagraj and Varanasi, which it won under the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) monetisation programme of NHAI for a value of Rs 3,144 crore in January 2023.
Other assets of the fund include the 60-kilometre Dichpally Tollway in Telangana and the 22-kilometre Devanahalli Tollway in Karnataka, which were acquired from the Essel Group in 2020. The former connects Hyderabad to Nagpur while the latter connects Bengaluru city to its airport.
The NIIF Master Fund has a corpus of $2.34 billion and is backed by marquee investors such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Temasek, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Australian Super, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Public Sector Pension Investment Board, Development Finance Corporation, ICICI Bank, HDFC Group, Axis Bank and Kotak Life Insurance Company.
