![]() John: In our private communications, we have covered butterflies and caterpillars. This has paved the way for many more InvITs in India in both the private and public sectors. We also innovated in May 2018 by launching Indinfravit, an Infra Investment Trust (InvIT) akin to REITs, with three marquee global investors. It is interesting to note that Canada’s largest pension fund’s investing arm, CPP Investments, made a substantial investment into IDPL in 2014 and today has a 49 percent shareholding. Our major projects include the Hyderabad Metro, Bangalore International Airport, three seaports, urban water supply, renewable energy, power transmission and highways. L&T IDPL is a PPP infrastructure developer working across the entire life-cycle from design to financing to execution to operations. (Fun fact: L&T built the bridge in ‘The Bridge over the River Kwai’) L&T is a trusted name with many mega-projects already completed or under-construction. Shailesh: L&T IDPL is a subsidiary of Larsen and Toubro, an 80 year old Indian multinational in technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing and financial services with operations in over 30 countries. John: Now that we have talked about the past and the future, please bring me up to speed on the present and L&T IDPL? The next decade is going to see more change than the last three decades, and I hope to embrace such change. ![]() Then again, I serve currently or earlier on non-profit advisory boards relating to good governance and urban issues, especially safer cities for women and children, digitalised financial inclusion, road safety, tiger conservation, and also international relations in the context of India growing to be the third largest economy by 2030.Ībove all, I hope to keep learning from younger and smarter friends who display the four I’s: Intelligence, Inquisitiveness, Integrity, and Intellectual honesty. This is in addition to affiliations with the top two Indian business chambers. I am currently Co-Chair, BRICS Business Council Infra Working Group, having joined it in 2012. As part of the G20 nations’ business group B20, I’ve been a member of their Finance & Infrastructure Task Force since 2016. Currently or earlier, I have been on boards of companies in infrastructure development, ports & logistics, renewable energy, micro-finance, mutual funds, and insurance. With my unique ability to empathise with friends in Mumbai, Delhi as well as state capitals, I have often leveraged this combination of business, government, and not-for-profit perspectives to produce good outcomes for all stakeholders. There are very few professionals who know Delhi and Mumbai equally well, and almost none of these professionals know the state capitals equally well, to understand diverse points of view. ![]() India’s governments are in the national capital, New Delhi, as well as in 28 state capitals, while the finance capital is Mumbai. Shailesh: In the inaugural CRISP 2011 programme, I learnt about how leaders and innovators are boundary-spanners who can talk with both science and business and synthesise outcomes. And then will you go into some more depth for us? Will you mention briefly how CRISP, the programme through which we met at Oxford, helped you mature your basic notion of how to combine public and private. John: A combination of business, government, and non-profits seems to have worked well for you. In brief, over a 35-year career, 18 in the private sector and 17 in the government, so some call me a public-private-partnership (PPP) of the good sort. In 2017 I joined India’s largest infrastructure conglomerate, Larsen and Toubro (L&T) as CEO of L&T IDPL. Since then, I have been active in infrastructure finance and execution life-cycle, international fundraising, investing and asset management, and also smart cities and urban issues, working out of Mumbai, London, Delhi and Chennai. In 2007 I re-joined the private sector to specialise in infrastructure finance and execution, and returned to the ICICI group’s private equity firm: I-Ven in Mumbai. I spent the next 17 years in the IAS in a variety of fascinating roles at districts and state capitals. After a brief stint with HSBC, I joined the Government of India’s top civil service, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). After my MBA in 1986 I worked in project finance and investment banking with ICICI for four years in Bombay, as it then was. Shailesh: A British friend described my career as poacher-turned-gamekeeper-turned-poacher. John Hoffmire: I always like to start an interview by asking for a broad brushstroke picture of a career.
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