EAAA Alternatives (Edelweiss Alternatives) is looking to invest Rs 40000 crore in clean energy by 2030 through its India Energy Transition Fund. The fund manager also recently invested ₹530 crore in Greenheart Tech Park , part of Embassy Manyata Business Park, Bengaluru. through its Rental Yield Plus fund, consolidating it’s holding in the tech hub. In an interview , Subahoo Chordia, chief executive at EAAA Alternatives tells Raghavendra Kamath about their investment strategy and outlook for sectors.
In one of the recent interviews, you said you will quadruple your commercial assets to 9 to 10 million square feet and buy some office assets in Bangalore, Gurgaon and other places. So, any update on that?
Our commercial real estate fund has raised ~ Rs 4200 crore from global and domestic institutional investors and closed in 2025. The fund has already acquired closer to 2 million square feet with assets in Bengaluru and Gurgaon. The strategy is to buy entire campuses or buildings. We are looking at acquiring two more assets in the coming weeks and with that we will be closer to about 4–4.5 million square feet.
Across your funds, what is the kind of dry powder you have left? . In 2026, how much can you plan to invest in the next one year?
The real assets business AUM today stands at around Rs 22,200 crore. And dry powder right now is around Rs 8000 crore as we raise money every year. This amount is not yet called for from investors but part of committed amount.
As regards investments in assets, we look at opportunities that has the potential to deliver a good IRR at exit. Additionally, we do not target a specific amount of deployment each year, there is, of course, a broader strategy of deployment in place, but we will not deploy for the sake of deployment.
What is your exit strategy?
So, as an exit strategy, we basically look at wherever we can find the maximum value. The Fund can sell it into a REIT or can form its own REIT. And it can sell to any of the global investors. It all depends upon which mode gives the highest valuation on exit.
Since you are also into energy transition, despite the rise of these renewables, thermal is still the mainstay of mitigating India’s power demand, what is your views ?
India’s power demand grows by about 120 to 140 billion units every year. So, we cannot have one solution to meet our energy demands. There is thermal, renewables and nuclear as well coming into play. Only renewables cannot meet the demand of the country.Last year, we put up ~30 gigawatt of renewable, we need to add ~45- 50 gigawatt of renewables every year if we have to meet the target of 2030 which is 500 GW of capacity from non-fossil fuel sources. We do see the renewables space growing at a faster pace to meet that.
Are valuations going up in renewable assets?
There are three valuations. Equity market has gone very high on the valuation. The companies which used to trade at 9.5–10 times EBITDA, are now trading at 13 to 15 times EBITDA multiple. So, the valuations on the listed equity market has gone up. So, whether you look at IndiGrid Infrastructure Trust, and our energy InvIT called Anzen, valuations have gone up. If you look at the private market, valuations have gone up here too. The Greenfield market where assets are made, IRRs have gone up. So, in India, the tariff of solar had gone down to 2 rupees plus. Now the new bid is around 2.50 rupees. So, the tariff of renewables has gone up recently. So, IRR on Greenfield has gone up and market valuations on both on InvITs as well as on equity have also gone up.
What kind of assets you are looking to invest in infra? And secondly, a lot of new players have come in. Global players are there, CPP is there, Ontario Teachers’ Pension is there. So, when they come to India, do you feel any competition from them in acquiring assets or it doesn’t make any difference?
No, there is no big difference in our ticket size. We compete with all the global players. An analogy to that is our Indian cricket team, their performance on home ground, when they play a match in India, their win ratio is much higher than when they play outside India. And this typically happens with every team. One of the added advantages is our first hand market knowledge across India. So, there will always be global players coming to India. And when we started the business in 2018, there were a lot of companies, even the names you mentioned. But despite that, we have scaled up the business, purchased assets and generated returns. So, this competition will always be there. Healthy competition benefits investors, assets, and the socio-economic environment, while strengthening the overall AIF market.
