A KKR India managing director Ami Momaya has left the company and will be joining Blackstone, according to two sources familiar.

Momaya, who joined KKR as a director in January 2022, has agreed a new role where she will establish and lead Blackstone’s India infrastructure strategy, working as part of a broader APAC team, the sources said.

A Blackstone spokesperson denied the development, adding that it has not made any formal hiring decisions for its India infrastructure strategy.

Her last day at work in KKR was 25 July, a third source said, adding that she will continue to be based in Mumbai.

A KKR spokesperson declined to comment. Infralogic was unable to contact Momaya.

Blackstone has already hired Parag Sharma, founder and CEO of EQT and Temasek-backed O2 Power, which was sold to Mumbai-based conglomerate JSW Group last year.

Blackstone will likely set up a team quickly in about six months or so, similar to how KKR established its Asia Pacific infrastructure strategy about six years ago, an APAC managing director and head of a foreign investment firm said.

KKR started building an Asia Pacific infrastructure team in 2018 and by the end of 2019 had made around a dozen hires. KKR’s team is led by its Partner, Hardik Shah, who has responsibility for infrastructure investments in India and the Asia Pacific.

Over the past five years, KKR has invested USD 3.5bn in infrastructure in India, one of its key markets.

Blackstone is planning to bring all its global pools of capital to India, senior managing director Mukesh Mehta told Infralogic in February.

The New York-based manager attempted to invest in infrastructure in India about two decades ago.

It pulled out of the USD 5bn Indian Infrastructure Fund launched in 2007 with Citigroup and India Infrastructure Finance Company, which was meant to invest in roads, ports and power projects.

The equity component of the fund was reduced to less than USD 1bn and Blackstone was allocated just USD 35m, or less than 5%.

Prior to KKR, Momaya was a partner at the Indian government-anchored National Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) for just under a year.

Before this, she worked at Morgan Stanley Investment Management for 15 years – first in New York city and then in Mumbai – in various roles including that of an executive director.