Gaw Capital Hires Macquarie Vet to Lead Expansion into India

Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital Partners has added some new territory to its investment universe with the announcement today of an India operation headed by former Macquarie Asset Management executive Nitin Gupta.

“Nitin will spearhead Gaw Capital Partners’ foray into India market, building a professional team on the ground to capture attractive investment opportunities across real estate spectrum,” Gaw said in a statement. “His exceptional leadership, market relationships and transaction structuring experience for over nearly three decades in India will be invaluable for building a scalable and successful business in India for Gaw Capital Partners.”

Gupta, who joins the real estate fund manager as managing director and head of India, had served for the last two years as a managing director with Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Investments (MIRA), after previously spending more than 11 years with Macquarie Capital as managing director and head of India.

Gaw Capital, which has managed $35.2 billion in assets from 2005 through the first quarter of this year, is adding an India office in Mumbai to its existing locations in Hong Kong, London and Los Angeles, as Indian real estate opportunities continue to attract the attention of global institutional investors.

Corporate Finance Expert

In total, Gupta spent over 14 years with Macquarie Group, where he led transactions of more than $7 billion, according to the Gaw statement. Prior to joining the Aussie finance group, Gupta worked for a decade in the corporate finance division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and also spent four years at the Industrial Development Bank of India.

That range of experience could be in demand as Gupta works with Gaw Capital’s growing array of initiatives, which include platforms dedicated to data centres, logistics and more traditional real estate sectors around the region.

During this year, Gaw has announced data centre projects in Vietnam, Japan and Korea, while also announcing the purchase of 32 Japanese residential assets on behalf of a Qatari fund in May.

In November of last year the firm led by Goodwin Gaw announced that it had reached a $1.2 billion first closing on its Gateway Real Estate Fund VII opportunistic strategy, which at the time was said to target investments in Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Southeast Asia and Australia.

India Rising

Gaw Capital’s expansion into India comes as part of a growing wave of investment by international institutions into the country’s commercial, industrial and data centre markets as an expanding tech sector and burgeoning consumer economy provide the potential for returns.

Earlier this month, Singaporean sovereign fund GIC said that it was investing another $50.6 million into projects developed by Indian retail builder Phoenix Mills as an expansion of an existing joint venture.

That retail deal was announced just days after UK fund manager Actis said that it would be investing $700 million in India life sciences assets after acquiring a local developer and operator.

In May, Bain Capital teamed up with Canada’s Ivanhoe Cambridge to set up a $1 billion industrial joint venture with local developer Lodha, with the goal of building 30 million square feet (2.8 million square metres) of warehouse space.

That deal was announced just over one month after Ivanhoe Cambridge’s compatriots at CPPIB had unveiled a $696 million office venture with the property division of India’s Tata Group, with April also witnessing the launch of a second Bangalore office project by US developer and fund manager Hines.