New Delhi, Jan 13: Anticipating a 700-billion-dollar investment pipeline for the country, ICICI bank managing director and CEO K V Kamath has said that corporates alone would infuse up to USD 500 billion dollars in the next three to four years.

"India has a strong investment pipeline. Currently, we are putting the pipeline at around USD 700 billion. Till recently, we talked about 500 billion dollars," Kamath said in an interview here.

More importantly, corporate cashflow itself would account for up to USD 500 billion and the investment needs would not depend heavily on debts, as was the case about ten years ago, Kamath said. The time period for these investments to materialise is 3-4 years, he added.

While noting that the timeframe would depend on sectors where the money is going, he said: "if it is an hydroelectric project, (it would be) three and a half years; if it is some other investment, the time frame could be different... This (3-4 years) is an average level."

The managing director of India's largest private lender said he does not see India's growth story slackening for another 15 years as there is a dramatic level of investment happening in the country.

"Just to put in context, about ten years back near 1995-96, if the national investment reached 15-20 billion dollars a year, we thought that was a tremendous improvement... We have raised the bar higher for ourselves.

"It is across all sectors, all areas where we see bottlenecks. There is nothing left out. If we see bottlenecks, this would mean that it needs to be funded," he said.

Kamath said that ten years back, this investment would have been funded through 30 per cent equity and 70 per cent debt. "That time you would have a large problem meeting this need and over leveraging risk consequent to that... Now, we believe that corporate cash flows are running between USD 150 billion to USD 200 billion a year."

This has reversed the trend to 70 per cent equity and 30 per cent debt now, cutting down the reliance on debt dramatically.

Noting that the country's robust economic growth was boosting the corporate cashflow, he said the corporate profit growth would be at least 15-20 per cent and there were no signs of a slowdown.

Besides, improving corporate numbers, global liquidity and an appetite for Indian equity are contributing to the decline in reliance on debts, Kamath said.

Corporate India is not consuming the debt to a level seen earlier and it is the public that is emerging as a major debt consumer, bringing down the pressure on liquidity, he noted.

"The lay consumer today is probably the largest consumer. Seven years back, the lay Indian was not a (significant) consumer and had the corporate India been consuming, the pressure would have been there," Kamath said.