Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman likes Indian office projects
US private equity giant Blackstone Group is building on its more than $5 billion of real estate deals in India by investing about 8 billion rupees ($123 million) in a pair of office projects in Hyderabad, according to reports. The projects – Knowledge Park and Knowledge Capital – total 6 million square feet (557,418 square metres) and are being developed by Indian builder Salarpuria Sattva Group.
The investment, which was reported by Indian business news portal Livemint citing people familiar with the matter, would expand a partnership with Salarpuria Sattva that Blackstone forged in early 2016 by investing in the developer’s Knowledge City office park project in Hyderabad.
In that deal, which marked Blackstone’s first investment in the south-central Indian city, the New York-based firm reportedly committed 4.7 billion rupees (nearly $80 million) to the under-construction project slated to provide 6.5 million square feet of office space.
Blackstone Builds Up India Portfolio
Blackstone’s total investment in the trio of Salarpuria Sattva projects is about 50 billion rupees ($769 million), including project-level debt that will be raised in addition to the equity capital Blackstone has committed, according to the local media report, which cited a source familiar with the investments, Representatives of Blackstone and Salarpuria Sattva did not reply to Mingtiandi’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Blackstone is said to have invested $80 million in the Knowledge City project in Hyderabad in 2016
Blackstone is India’s biggest office landlord, with a $3.7 billion office portfolio spanning 100 million square feet of space. The alternative asset behemoth continues to build up its presence in the world’s second most populous country, where it set up an office in 2007 and started investing at scale in 2011.
The company headed by Stephen Schwarzman has committed a total of $5.1 billion across 30 real estate investments in India, including office as well as retail and residential assets.
The latest reported deal follows Blackstone’s purchase of a 50 percent stake in two prime office assets in central Mumbai for $730 million late last month. Blackstone picked up the properties, believed to consist of Indiabulls Finance Centre and One Indiabulls Centre, from top-three domestic developer Indiabulls Real Estate.
Global Investors Heads to the Subcontinent
Blackstone leads the pack among international investors betting on India’s hot commercial property sector. Other heavyweights include Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, which was reported to be snapping up a $200 million stake in a Bangalore office portfolio in February — following its purchase of a stake in a unit of DLF, India’s most valuable developer, for about $1.4 billion last August.
Allianz, Brookfield, CapitaLand, and Ivanhoé Cambridge are among the other global investors who have joined the fray in the subcontinent.
Bangalore-based Salarpuria Sattva is one of India’s largest developers, with a portfolio of over 22 million square feet of built properties and 18 million square feet under construction, according to its corporate website.
The company appears to have become Blackstone’s preferred local partner in the information technology hub of Hyderabad. Elsewhere in India, Blackstone has tied up with Embassy Group in Bangalore, Panchshil Realty in Pune and K Raheja Corp in Mumbai.
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