Hyderabad: Citing an opportunity to fund cash strapped real estate companies, ICICI Venture is in the process of raising about Rs.1,000 crore from high net worth individuals (HNIs).
It will be beneficial to ICICI Venture, real estate companies and also those who invest in this as they could have returns of about 20 per cent over three-four years, Mr Sanjeev Dasgupta, President of ICICI Venture, said.
“We have enquiries from many real state project developers from six-seven cities who need funds to keep them going and complete them. Typically, these real estate projects would be in the range of Rs.50-70 crore. The Rs.1,000 crore we plan to raise includes a Green Shoe option,” Mr. Dasgupta said.
The focus of such funding of real estate firms would be on partnering companies which do not have access to foreign direct investments (FDI).
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Tishman Speyer event here, Mr. Dasgupta said that ICICI Venture has been extremely active in Hyderabad and has funded projects with a total investment of about Rs.1,500 crore since 2004. This includes the likes of Dr. Reddy’s Lab, Bharat Biotech, Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC) and Karvy among a host of others. This funding was part of the $2 billion fund raised earlier.
“Recently, we raised about $550 million private equity fund. Of this, about $350 million worth projects have already been committed, including a recent investment into Star Health Insurance. We expect this fund to get fully booked soon,” he said.
A mega ICICI-Tishman Speyer project, an IT special economic zone, is coming up with a total built up office space of 2.5 million square feet in Hyderabad. The office space, which has the potential to locate about 21,000 employees has begun operations with a soft launch. About 1,000 people have already begun work there.
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