KKR maps credit, infra push in India: Mkt of 'critical strategic priority'

India has moved to the center of KKR's Asia strategy as domestic consumption rises and policy remains supportive of private capital, Nuttall said

Global investment giant KKR & Co is preparing to scale up its India presence in private equity, infrastructure, and private credit after having invested more than $9 billion in the country over the past five years, positioning India as a “critical 

strategic priority” within its global strategy, according to Scott Nuttall, KKR’s global co-chief executive 

officer. 

Nuttall said the firm ultimately wanted its India business to resemble its global model as the market evolved — expanding beyond buyouts and core infrastructureinto areas such as insurance capital solutions and capital markets.

 

India has moved to the centre of KKR’s Asia strategy as domestic consumption rises and policy supports private capital, Nuttall said, adding that the firm intended to be “ever more active” across asset classes.

 

“India is a critical strategic priority for KKR, not just in the Asia context, but in a global context,” he said last week in Mumbai.

 

“Globally, KKR will invest between $90 billion and $100 billion this year (2025). Given India’s position as the world’s fifth-largest economy and soon to be the third, we would expect our activities in India to increasingly resemble the firm’s global profile over time,” Nuttall said in a media round table.

 

Since establishing its India office in 2008, KKR has invested more than $13 billion, through nearly 40 transactions.

 

The firm’s deployment in India has accelerated compared to its early years. KKR invested around $4 billion in its first decade and then more than doubled that in about half the time, according to Gaurav Trehan, KKR’s head of Asia-Pacific (private equity) and India leader.

 

India is among the largest contributors to KKR’s Asia private equity and infrastructure funds, which Trehan described as “top quartile”.

 

KKR started in Indian private equity — spanning health care, life sciences, education, consumer, technology, and financial services — and that remains the largest share of its local investment. But the firm has expanded its approach, launching infrastructure in early 2020 and relaunching private credit after resolving legacy non-bank finance challenges.

 

“Our two most active markets in Asia are India and Japan, and both have delivered strong returns. That strength has enabled us to build an Asia platform across private equity and infrastructure,” Nuttall said.

 

In infrastructure, KKR now owns one of India’s largest power-transmission grids, several renewable-energy platforms, and one of the country’s largest toll-road platforms — the assets, Trehan said, are still in the “early innings” of growth.

 

“We are just getting started in infrastructure,” he said.

 

Private credit, where KKR earlier faced challenges tied to earlier ventures in non-banking credit companies, has been rebuilt with a new team and a strategy emphasising underwriting discipline and partnerships with “high-quality founders”.

 

Since the relaunch, the Indian private-credit books have had “no principal loss”, and all loans are current, Trehan said.

 

KKR has invested roughly $1 billion in India as private credit — about 10 per cent of recent deployment — including a $600 million financing for the Manipal group. 

 

Globally, KKR manages $650 billion-700 billion, including around $250 billion to $300 billion in credit, $200 billion in private equity, $200 billion in real assets and about $200 billion of assets at its insurance business — capital that already participates in Indian deals via private credit. In 2025, KKR expects to invest between $90 billion and $100 billion worldwide, he said.

 

“What should we do in India” on insurance is an active question for the firm, Nuttall noted, pointing to the Manipal transaction as an example of how insurance balance-sheet capital can support opportunities in emerging markets.

 

As India’s capital markets deepen — including a more liquid traded-debt market — KKR also sees room to grow its capital markets business.

 

KKR’s optimism is driven by familiar factors: Rising domestic demand, a pro-business policy environment, and increasing financialisation of household savings. Nuttall expects India to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, arguing that the structural positives “materially outweigh” cyclical fluctuations inherent in rapid growth.

 

One priority for KKR is developing a deeper corporate-bond market. “Companies need different pools of capital, different types of capital to grow,” Trehan said, calling a more mature debt-capital market essential for India to reach its long-term potential.

 

A key differentiator for KKR in India, Trehan said, is its operating model. Unlike rivals that separate teams strictly by asset class, KKR organises around countries — KKR India, KKR Japan, KKR China and others — encouraging cross-pollination between private equity, credit and infrastructure teams. Deals often originate in one strategy and are executed through another.

 

KKR has expanded from two offices when Nuttall joined to about 35 globally, and from roughly 50 employees to around 4,500. In Asia, it employs around 600 people — “no expats”, Nuttall emphasised — with deeply local teams backed by global capabilities.

 

While KKR did not disclose detailed India performance metrics, Trehan said the firm’s Asia private equity and infrastructure funds were top quartile, with India the largest contributor to both — driven by capital-markets exits and strategic sales to domestic and international buyers.

 

India has evolved, he said, from a market of promise to one delivering realised returns at scale.

 

 

KKR looks at a 10-25 year horizon KKR is calibrating its India investment to multi-decade horizons, Trehan said, asking “what can we invest in for the next 10, 15, 20, 25 years?” rather than looking for returns in five or six. That lens steers the firm toward platforms with enduring tailwinds — transmission, renewables, roads — and sectors likely to scale significantly over the next quarter-century, while avoiding those with limited potential to grow domestically.

 

If the last five years were about proving that India can deliver both deployment and exits, the next phase will focus on breadth and compounding.

 

Nuttall declined to give a precise number for how much KKR could deploy in India over the next five years — “I don’t know the path,” he said — but expects the trajectory to be “asymptotic” as markets open further to private capital and as KKR deploys its full toolkit — private equity, infrastructure, credit, insurance capital and capital-markets capabilities.