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Asia stands at a crossroads. It is home to some of the world’s most advanced megacities, hyperconnected, innovation-led hubs such as Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul, that reflect the region’s capacity to leapfrog into the future.
These urban centres boast everything from cutting-edge fintech ecosystems to AI-integrated city planning. Yet beyond these leading capitals, much of Asia still grapples with foundational development challenges.
Across vast parts of the region, there remains a pressing need for hard infrastructure: roads, railways, water systems, and energy grids that are essential for economic and social integration.
This divergence is more than a question of uneven growth; it poses a strategic test for Asia’s long-term trajectory. While parts of Asia operate on tomorrow’s bandwidth, others are still laying the groundwork for today. Indeed, the region’s ability to lead the global economy will depend as much on expanding its physical infrastructure as on advancing its digital frontiers.
Addressing this imbalance is central to the work of Actis, a global investor focused on sustainable infrastructure. With an emphasis on long-term capital and local impact, Actis is deploying investment into core sectors such as renewable energy, transportation, and digital infrastructure across high-growth Asian markets.
The firm’s strategy is grounded in providing critical infrastructure in growth markets. From building and operating energy platforms in India to scaling data centre infrastructure in Southeast Asia, Actis is playing a critical role in enabling the region’s transition towards resilient and future-ready growth.
With nearly US$3.5 billion already invested in energy assets across India, Southeast Asia, and Japan, the firm is building renewable platforms at scale, targeting a future powered by solar, wind, and hybrid battery storage.
In Singapore, The Asset met with Torbjorn Caesar, chairman and senior partner at Actis, and Rahul Agrawal, head of energy for Southeast Asia, to understand how the company is reconciling the continent’s energy-hungry growth with its decarbonization imperative, and making the numbers work along the way.
Building, not flipping
The dominant challenge in Asia, Caesar explains, isn’t merely transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables; it’s building new capacity from the ground up. “It’s not about swapping one power source for another. It’s about meeting demand that’s still growing at 7% a year in some markets.”
Actis’s strategy is rooted in control. “We are builders and operators. From our experience, that changes your risk profile,” Caesar says. “By constructing platforms ourselves, we can capture the yield compression from development through to operation. We don't just buy assets; we create them. This gives us pricing power and risk insight that we don’t think others can match.”
At the heart of Actis’s model are capital-gain funds structured around long-term cash flows. “You start with DCF-based ( discounted cash flow ) assets, individual solar or wind plants. As you scale, diversify, and professionalize, those become ebitda-multiple businesses. That’s the arbitrage,” Caesar explains. The firm typically exits through platform sales after aggregation, generating strong IRRs ( internal rates of return ) for limited partnerships.
De-risking the Asian equation
To mobilize institutional capital at scale, risk must be addressed structurally, not just priced in. “Asia is seen as riskier, but when you’re selling essential power in a market that’s short of electricity, your cash flows are arguably safer than selling into overbuilt grids in Europe,” says Caesar.
He is clear about what makes a market investable: “Transparent regulation. Cost-reflective tariffs. A predictable permitting path. That’s what attracts investment.”
In places like the Philippines, Actis waited years until those fundamentals were aligned. Now, they’re building an 8-gigawatt solar capacity via Terra Solar, in what’s likely to be one of the world’s largest integrated renewables and battery storage platforms.
Sustainability is integrated
For Actis, sustainability isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a source of financial premium. “We don’t do sustainability for the brochure,” Caesar says. “It’s integrated. From our experience, better governance means smoother exits. Community engagement reduces on-the-ground risk. Environmental safeguards protect asset value.”
Investors are paying attention. “In our exits, we see higher valuations for platforms with embedded sustainability because buyers know they’re inheriting lower risk.”
Actis’s capital deployment also follows a distinctive pattern, investing where the capital-to-opportunity ratio is most misaligned. “In the early 2000s, when India was flooded with capital, we went to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. When India cooled, we entered, timing matters more than size,” Caesar notes.
Today, that logic guides their Asia focus: Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan – each at a different inflection point, but all showing capital gaps and project momentum.
Beyond power, Actis is embedding itself in digital infrastructure. “We acquired Standard Chartered’s real estate platform, which enabled us to move into data centres early,” says Caesar. “Digital transformation is driving demand for reliable, scalable energy, and vice versa. The two are increasingly inseparable.”
“Digital transformation is also a core value driver across our platforms,” he continues. “We use data, automation, and AI to unlock operational efficiencies, improve asset performance, reduce risk, and accelerate value creation, particularly in fast-growing markets like Asia.
“We use AI models to optimize the efficiency of our large power-generation platforms. This is across areas such as predictive maintenance, drones for blade inspections, detailed weather forecasting to optimize generation, price energy contracts, and model gas demand and prices. It’s a key value lever for us.”
