In the US, Brookfield has invested $15 billion in a joint venture with Intel Corp. to build a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Arizona. Arpit Agrawal, head of India and the Middle East for Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, which has assets worth more than $13 billion in India, said that while Brookfield’s plans to invest in semiconductors in India are in their early stages, they are likely to proceed in a similar manner.
“Can we do this in India? Of course. The semiconductor industry is growing strongly; this is an area we can focus on,” Agrawal said.
India has been seeking foreign investment in chip manufacturing and has pledged ₹84,000 crore in production-related incentives. Earlier this month, the state of Maharashtra said the Adani Group was working with Israel’s Tower Semiconductor on a $10 billion semiconductor project. On Monday, Mint reported that Tata Electronics intends to build two more semiconductor plants in Gujarat. In 2023, several media reports said Reliance Industries was interested in entering the chip manufacturing sector, including a possible investment in Tower Semiconductor.
Agrawal said that while Brookfield has held talks with some Indian companies, these plans and talks are still at a very preliminary stage and require more thinking and structuring. He declined to disclose the investment timeline or amount because there is no certainty that a deal will be reached. Agrawal clarified that Brookfield has no minimum or maximum investment cap for projects that it is truly interested in.
A Brookfield spokesman later said talks to invest in other areas such as fiber optics and smart meters were at an advanced stage, while its semiconductor plans were still preliminary. The company is also evaluating opportunities to develop electric vehicle infrastructure.
“We evaluated a lot of different factors, including charging infrastructure and decarbonizing public transportation,” Agrawal said. “We also looked at scale. So I left manufacturing out.”
The company is currently looking to invest in the electric vehicle value chain. “We want to be a big player in this space in the short term,” he said.
Given Brookfield’s tower business, investing in the fiber business would be adjacent to the company’s business. “I think it makes sense for us to be in it. We have about 1.5 million kilometers of fiber globally. In India, we have no fiber investments. Is it a business we like? Absolutely – the country is building about 100,000 kilometers of fiber every month. It is something we have studied elsewhere in the world. We need to find the right business model that works,” Agrawal said.
Reliance Jio’s Digital Fiber Infrastructure Trust has received investments from investors including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Agrawal said working with companies is a key pillar of Brookfield’s strategy. “A lot of infrastructure is still in the hands of companies. Leaving aside the specifics of semiconductors, generally speaking, if you think about it, a lot of infrastructure is in the hands of companies, and they may be looking to recycle those assets because it’s not necessarily the best use of capital, and we support them in that,” he said.
Last week, Brookfield’s Data Infrastructure Trust, along with British Columbia Investment Management and Singapore’s GIC, completed its acquisition of ATC’s Indian assets for $2 billion, making it the largest telecom tower owner in India. This is Brookfield’s third acquisition in the sector after it acquired the tower business from Reliance Industries four years ago. In 2022, Brookfield also acquired 6,300 towers focused on small cells.
With this acquisition, the company will have over 257,000 communication towers in India with the capacity to expand further.
“Telecom towers is a business we like. It’s an industry we like. So if that means we need to grow organically or inorganically, it’s certainly possible,” Agrawal said. “We are convinced by the story.”
In January this year, Brookfield announced a three-way joint venture with Reliance and US real estate investment trust Digital Realty to develop data centers in India.
Agrawal noted that Brookfield is currently developing two data centers in Mumbai and Chennai through the joint venture and could become a consolidator in the data center space in the future.
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