mumbai for anuj ranjan the globetrotting india head of brookfield the fundamental investment thesis behind buying a large telecom towers portfolio from reliance communications was not all that different from taking over hiranandanis 45 million square foot of swish office and shopping space in the financial capital the worlds largest democracy with a billion plus population needs to communicate share information as well as work and play to sustain its trillion dollar economy more importantly both are scaledup income generating operational assets which can be leveraged further using their global expertise to build out larger platforms similarly they have high margins with low capital expenditure going forward and builtin escalators toronto based brookfield is the worlds 2nd biggest manager of alternative assets like real estate and private equity with 250 billion of assets and have already overshadowed traditional wall street heavyweights carlyle kkr or even apollo global managament so capital has never been a handicap for ranjan and his 1000 odd team on the ground fresh from raising 14 billion to invest in infrastructure believed to be the largest single commitment to the sector of its kind the candian firm has been scouting around for compelling stories across emerging markets like ours so when both the hiranandani and the reliance towers came up for grabs last summer brookfield jumped head long by the end of the year they wrote a 26 billion to stitch up both arguably among the largest fdi commitments in india in the year the brookfield reliance infratel transaction worth 16 billion alone is also the secondbiggest private equity transaction ever in the country behind temaseks 2 billion investment in bharti telecom in 2007 call it canada calling the bulge bracket canadian asset managers from pension or pe funds have been the biggest india bulls in the last one year whipping up a storm with their investment frenzy between marque names like cppib caisse de dept et placement du quebec cdpq ontario teachers or brookfield and fairfax they have jointly committed around 78 billion across companies and funds so far according to industry estimates this would be among the singlelargest countrywide commitment towards india in recent times such canadian transactions mirror the excitement of pe opportunities in india which reached fever pitch in the peak vintage of 20072008 this becomes even more striking once compared to fdi or trade data canada has never been a top investment source for us with bilateral trade touching a mere 65 billion in march 2016 thats only a tenth of neighbour us the 5th largest fdi partner as per the latest government figures our long investment horizon aligns to the financing and capital needs of indias economy growing entrepreneur culture and the strength of business in the country says suyi kim managing director head of asia pacific at cppib from the building blocks airports roads power plants to warehouses logistics parks and commercial real estate to financial services and even financial services firms and even ecommerce companies