BluPine Energy, a unit of London-based private equity firm Actis, has bought solar power assets from Acme group for an enterprise value of ₹1,700 crore, said people familiar with the matter. The acquired assets are housed in 14 special purpose vehicles.
“Binding agreements have been signed. The deal is subject to certain closing conditions,” said one of the persons cited above.
The acquisition will add 312 megawatts of solar capacity to BluPine Energy, which was incorporated in 2021, the people said.
Actis and Acme Solar did not comment for this story.
BluPine has rapidly expanded capacities through acquisitions and currently has a renewable capacity of 1.8 gigawatts.
In November last year, the company announced the acquisition of solar projects of 400 megawatts capacity from Atha Group.
Actis, which has $12.73 billion in assets under management, had previously announced plans to invest $800 million (₹6,666 crore) in BluPine Energy and ramp up the capacity to 4 gigawatts eventually. A substantial part of this growth could come from acquisitions, said people aware of the matter.
On its part, Actis had successfully built and divested two renewable energy companies in India, namely, Ostro Energy and Sprng Energy. It sold Ostro Energy to ReNew Power in 2018 for $1.63 billion, and subsequently sold Sprng Energy to Shell for $1.55 billion last year.
Gurugram-based Acme group, founded by Manoj Upadhyay, has a large portfolio of solar projects with almost 10 gigawatts under construction and 1.5 gigawatts of operational solar power projects, according to its website.
“Acme like other renewable energy companies keeps divesting assets periodically. This helps to generate funds for re-investment in new projects,” said a person aware of the company’s thinking.
Actis, through its arm Actis Long Life Infrastructure Fund, had purchased 400 megawatts of solar assets from Acme in 2020 as well.
While overall merger and acquisition activity has remained slow this year compared to previous years, there was one large deal in the renewable energy sector with Malaysia’s Petronas agreeing to invest $1.6 billion in Greenko group’s new green ammonia venture. That ranked amongst the top five capital raises in the current year across sectors.
The government has announced a target to build almost 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Indian conglomerates such as Tata, Adani, JSW and Birla have all entered the renewable energy generation businesses.
