India-focused real estate fund house , part of the Mumbai-based financial services company ASK Group, is planning to raise its first offshore fund with a corpus of $250-300 million, a top company executive told VCCircle.
ASK Group is currently raising its second domestic fund, ASK Real Estate Special Opportunities Fund, of Rs 1,000 crore and it will start the process for the offshore fund after closing the current one.
According to Sunil Rohokale, CEO & managing director of ASK Investment Holdings, the second fund has already raised Rs 700 crore and a final close is expected soon. The fund plans to stay invested for a period of 3-4 years and its average investment would be in the range of Rs 75-125 crore per project.
“Our second fund is a development fund, focused towards residential property development in key cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi,†said Rohokale.
The fund will invest only in mid-size development projects spanning 5-15 acres in city central or suburbs. It is targeting projects with a price tag in the range of Rs 4,000-6,000 per sq. ft. in all cities except Mumbai where the ticket size would be higher, at around Rs 8,000-12,000 per sq. ft.
raise $5.3 billion or more from both domestic and offshore markets. At least 15 funds, including JP Morgan Asset Management, HDFC Property Fund, ASK Property Investment Advisors, ICICI Venture, IndiaReit and Kotak PE, Azure Capital, Triangle Real Estate, Paracor Capital Advisors and ArthVeda Fund Managementamong others, are in the market to raise funds.
Some of the bigger fund houses are eyeing the $500 million mark, which has also become the sweet spot for sector-agnostic private equity funds in India. ASK Property Investment Advisors is also one of them.
ASK group had raised its first domestic fund of $75 million during March-December 2009, which was completely invested in residential segment across six projects – one each in Delhi and Bangalore and two each in Chennai and Pune.