Capital Infra Trust is a sovereign-backed annuity platform that turns India’s highway-building programme into a predictable income stream - it owns roads, but it never counts the cars. Settled in 2023 and listed in January 2025, the Trust was created by Gawar Construction Limited, a contractor with over 25 years of delivering highways ahead of schedule, to house operational road assets under a single listed entity. The recurring approach is to buy only completed highways where the government pays a fixed semi-annual cheque regardless of traffic, lock in maintenance costs for life, and distribute nearly all the cash to unitholders - a model designed to remove volume risk, cost risk and construction risk from the equation.
Business segments
A single engine - a portfolio of 12 operational highways where the government, not the tollbooth, writes the cheque - with a built-in acquisition pipeline that replenishes it.
1. Hybrid Annuity roads: a sovereign-backed income stream with no traffic risk
The Trust collects fixed, inflation-indexed semi-annual payments from NHAI on 12 completed highways - revenue that arrives on schedule whether 10 vehicles or 10,000 use the road.
- The government is the only customer - every rupee of revenue comes from the National Highways Authority of India, a sovereign-linked entity, under concession agreements that run for a weighted average of 11.1 remaining years across the portfolio.
- Annuities, not tolls - under the Hybrid Annuity Model, NHAI pays a fixed sum twice a year that recovers the balance project cost (after 40% paid during construction) plus interest at the RBI Bank Rate plus a 3% spread, along with a separate O&M payment that rises 5% each year for inflation.
- Interest-rate hedge built in - because NHAI’s annuity interest component resets with the central bank’s rate, any rise in the Trust’s own borrowing cost is offset by higher incoming annuity payments, turning rate cycles into a wash.
- Twelve roads, eight states - the portfolio spans 2,745 km of highway across Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh, with a total bid project cost of Rs. 134,190 Mn and 86 of 270 lifetime annuity payments already collected.
2. Fixed-price maintenance: cost risk parked with the sponsor for life
Every road in the portfolio is maintained by Gawar Construction Limited under a contract that locks in the price for the entire concession - the Trust never sees a surprise repair bill.
- Lifetime cost ceiling - the Project Management Agreement fixes O&M costs for each asset’s full life, with no variation or cost pass-through during the lock-in period, so commodity price spikes or wage inflation hit the Project Manager, not the Trust.
- Sponsor cannot walk away - Gawar Construction Limited is locked in for at least the first five years of the agreement regardless of cost escalations, while the Investment Manager retains the right to terminate.
- NHAI standards, zero penalties - maintenance is performed to the highway authority’s performance benchmarks, and independent engineer inspections have confirmed smooth ride quality with no major surface issues; no NHAI litigations or penalties were reported during the quarter.
- Beyond potholes - the O&M programme includes solar power plants operational at four projects, roughly 4.1 lakh trees planted and maintained, and a stray-animal management programme that NHAI has recognised as a model for wider adoption.
3. The acquisition pipeline: a right-of-first-offer engine that feeds the portfolio
The Trust has a contractual first look at 17 highways being built by its sponsor, plus the mandate to buy from third parties - but only completed HAM assets that meet a return hurdle, never a greenfield bet.
- Ten-year ROFO lock - a Right of First Offer agreement with Gawar Construction Limited, renewable after five years, covers both HAM and toll assets; if the sponsor rejects the Trust’s offer, it cannot sell the asset to anyone else below that price.
- Eight roads nearing the door - eight ROFO assets are at advanced stages with over 75% physical completion and expected to be ready for acquisition around Q3 FY27, spanning Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Jharkhand.
- Nine more by FY29 - a further nine sponsor assets are under construction, from Punjab to Himachal Pradesh, creating a multi-year replenishment schedule that extends the visible pipeline.
- Discipline, not just growth - every acquisition must clear a minimum return hurdle with IRR discipline, independent valuation benchmarks related-party deals, and unitholder consent is required for material transactions; the target is double-digit returns, with a ballpark of roughly 11% to 11.5% for planned deals.
Group structure and partners
A three-entity governance frame - Trustee, Investment Manager and Project Manager - separates oversight from execution, with a board chaired by a former NHAI chairman.
- The Trustee is Axis Trustee Services Limited, and the debt security trustee is IDBI Trusteeship Services Limited, providing independent fiduciary oversight under SEBI InvIT regulations.
- The Investment Manager, Gawar Investment Manager Private Limited, earns a fee of 1.10% of each SPV’s revenue - defined as annuity, interest and O&M receipts from NHAI - and its board includes three independent directors, among them a former Secretary of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways who previously chaired NHAI.
- The Sponsor and Project Manager, Gawar Construction Limited, is a Class I contractor rated AA Stable with an order book of approximately Rs. 141,971 Mn, over 3,000 employees, a presence across 18 states, and a track record of zero litigation with NHAI.
- The Trust’s units trade on both the NSE (symbol: CAPINVIT) and BSE (scrip code: 544338), with institutional holders - mutual funds, insurers, pension funds and foreign portfolio investors - collectively holding the majority of public units after the December 2025 institutional placement.