Kotak Mahindra launch set to tap into India's infrastructure spend

Kotak Mahindra is launching an Indian infrastructure investment trust in a bid to benefit from the $1trn the Indian government has pledged to spend in the sector within the next few years.

Kotak has seeded the fund with £6.5m, while Investec has given its backing with a further £3m of seed capital. The fund will be managed by Nitin Jain, who runs an infrastructure Oeic for the group, the £65m India Infrastructure and Realty fund. Jain says the trust will be benchmarked against the FTSE IDFC India Infrastructure 30 index and will look to buy into Indian companies in the listed equity space. “We believe the industrial space is a long-term investment story and now is the right time to launch an investment trust as the sector has underperformed during the past three year...