IndiGrid Eyes Renewable Push After Karnataka Acquisition; Plans Capital Raise Amid Growth

IndiGrid is betting big on India's renewable energy transition, with its latest acquisition in Karnataka adding significant capacity to its portfolio. “About 2,500 megawatt are renewable energy projects, and we also acquired one more asset a couple of months back which translates another 2.5 gigawatt, so it is almost translating to 5 gigawatt energy from the last two acquisitions,” said Harsh Shah, Managing Director of IndiGrid.

The company recently signed an agreement to acquire Gadag Transmission Ltd., an inter-state transmission project in Karnataka, for an enterprise value of Rs 372 crore. GTL is a build-own-operate-maintain project, with its first phase designed to evacuate around 2,500 MW of solar power from the Gadag Solar Energy Zone. The acquisition will be funded through a mix of equity, internal accruals, and debt.

“We were Rs 4,000 crore in 2016-17, now we have grown over 9 times. Size is just as we grow it will keep coming,” he said. To sustain this momentum, the company plans to raise additional capital. “We are seeing sizeable amount of opportunities so we would like to continue to grow so we would raise more capital,” Shah noted, adding “we like to raise capital upfront to ensure we are not missing out on growth”

However, Shah cautioned about challenges in the sector, particularly asset quality. “Quality of asset will come under question since there is no standard as of now, we believe that there is too many small players bidding in, we are not bidding at this price level, we do see that there will be some bit of consolidation, many of the projects will not end up getting executed, in Gensol one of the large project did not end of building, we will have to wait and watch as we see these assets get build up”, he added.