NSL Renewable Power Pvt Ltd, part of the Hyderabad-based NSL Group, has raised $60 million from a consortium that includes both private equity and strategic investors. Germany’s DEG, France’s Proparco, South Korea’s private equity firm Asia Clean Energy and GS Power Co. Ltd invested in the latest round of funding.
Existing investors FE Clean Energy and International Finance Corporation (IFC) also participated in this round of funding. In the previous round, the PE firms invested a total of $60 million for around 25 per cent stake in the company.
NSL Renewable Power, which was demerged from the group’s flagship Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, plans to build a capacity of 1,000 MW by 2016.
Nuziveedu Seeds, the largest seed company in India with a turnover of more than Rs 1,300 crore, is backed by the private equity major Blackstone.
The current round of funding will help NSL Renewable Power double its capacity from the current 185 MW in the next 18 months. The company will use the proceeds to fuel its growth in wind and hydro power sectors. It is currently setting up two wind energy projects with a total capacity of 186 MW and two hydel projects with a combined capacity of 150 MW. The projects have been undertaken at a subsidiary level.
For wind energy projects, NSL sources generators from the group firm Regen Powertech, which is backed by Everstone Capital and TVS Capital. The firm currently has 148 MW of wind power capacity, 20 MW of solar power, 12 MW of biomass power and 5 MW of hydel power.
Commenting on the development, M Prabhakar Rao, chairman of the NSL Group, said, “With this investment, the company will be able to accelerate its development pipeline and is well poised to achieve its targeted potential of being a 1 Gigawatt company by 2016.”
PE investments in the renewable energy space this year include Singapore’s GIC putting $150 million in Greenko Group and Bharat Light & Power raising $19 million from UTI Capital.
(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)
