Pei Hua Yeap, Executive Director, Aravest Sustainable Infrastructure 

Why deploying capital into sustainable infrastructure across APAC specifically, and what do you see that larger institutional players miss when they look at the same deals?

Larger institutional investors are excellent capital allocators; however, the deals we focus on often sit in a structural gap rather than a capability gap. Their minimum cheque sizes can be too large for mid-market platforms; their underwriting frameworks can struggle with assets where the value sits in development capability or contracted offtake structures rather than fully stabilised cash flows. We have spent years building relationships with developers, sponsors, and local counterparties across APAC — that pattern recognition compounds. The space we operate in is not about anyone missing something obvious; it is about the structure of capital mattering as much as the size of it.

Your investments span renewable energy platforms in Japan through AMP-lify, and Energy-as-a-Service infrastructure across SE Asia and India through August Energy. How do you think about portfolio construction across such different markets and business models?

ESG pressure from limited partners has caused many institutional investors to step back from APAC energy entirely. As a fund that has stayed active and kept deploying capital, how do you make the case to your LP base, and how do you think about the line between principled exclusion and genuine impact?

Aravest manages a multibillion-dollar portfolio of real assets across the region. How does being embedded in a broader real assets platform shape the way the infrastructure fund operates, in terms of deal sourcing, due diligence, and relationships with counterparties?

Sitting inside a broader real assets platform changes three things in practice. First, deal flow. We see opportunities through sister strategies and through relationships built across years and asset classes that a standalone fund would not have access to. Second, underwriting muscle. We share commercial, technical, and regulatory expertise across the platform, which lifts the quality of diligence on every deal. Third, counterparty trust. Sponsors, lenders, and government counterparties have multiple touchpoints with the firm, which compounds reputational capital over time. None of this replaces deal-level discipline, but it materially raises the floor on what we can credibly underwrite.

About Pei Hua Yeap, Executive Director at Aravest Sustainable Infrastructure