When, in September, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan agreed to invest $350 million with Edelweiss Alternative Asset Advisors to put into Indian private credit, there was a sense of Asia’s industry finding its voice.
Private debt has for years been a story of potential rather than action in the region; one of the world’s gold-standard investors putting serious money not just into India but into a strategy that includes distressed assets in India is a landmark.
It is part of a rising trend.
This year, despite (or maybe because of) the backdrop of Covid, raisings have included $200 million for a private credit fund by Pierfront Capital in Singapore; $500 million by OCP Asia for a direct lending fund for Asian small and medium companies; a new mezzanine infrastructure debt programme for Asia by AMP Capital; and, in October, the formal launch of Edelweiss’s $900 million ESOF III private credit fund, within which much of the Ontario Teachers mandate will be deployed.
Other investors in the Indian fund include Florida’s State Board of Administration and Swedish national pension fund AP4.
“Some of the leading investors in the world are investors in this fund,” Edelweiss group CEO Rashesh Shah told Euromoney and others in an October briefing, “allowing us to capitalize on the credit opportunities in India.”
