Private equity giant Blackstone Group is in talks to buy a majority stake in Nitesh Hub, a retail property owned by public-listed firm Nitesh Estates, for around Rs 300 crore ($46 million).
The firm would buy 80-85% stake in the project, giving exit to the developer and its platform partner for commercial assets in India – Goldman Sachs, according to media reports.
Nitesh Estates and Goldman Sachs had forged a joint investment platform for commercial assets back in 2015. The platform had a corpus of roughly $250 million.
Reports said the Pune mall would be transformed into a mixed-use development with both office and retail elements.
Nitesh Estates said in a stock market notification on Monday that it is in talks with investors to divest its stake in the property.
As and when the deal concludes, it would add muscle to the existing retail portfolio of Blackstone. It has set up a separate arm – Nexus Malls – for retail properties and has struck back-to-back deals to enhance its portfolio.
Recently, it appointed Dalip Sehgal—who was previously managing director of Graviss Group—as CEO of Nexus Malls.
Nexus Malls owns and manages shopping centres in the country. It has already acquired and is in the process of completing the transformation for AlphaOne Malls in Ahmedabad and Amritsar and is also in an advanced stage of discussions with several other developers for potential acquisitions. Nexus Malls also acquired Seawoods Grand Central in Navi Mumbai which is India’s first transit-oriented development.
Indian real estate market is presenting great opportunities to investors in the rental assets space. In one of the biggest deals in realty space, GIC bought into the rental arm of DLF that gave it exposure to commercial and retail properties in North India.
