Motilal Oswal Private Equity Advisors Pvt Ltd, the private equity arm of Motilal Oswal Financial Services, has hired Sharad Mittal as head of its real estate business. Previously, Mittal worked with ICICI Prudential AMC’s real estate practice as vice president – investments.
Motilal Oswal Private Equity has a Rs 200-crore real estate fund which also invests through co-investors. It is putting together IREF – II, a Rs 500-crore domestic real estate fund.
“We have crystalised the plan for scaling up the fund business. We will launch the fund in three-four months,” Mittal said.
Apart from the private equity fund, Mittal will focus on lending to real estate developers through Motilal Oswal’s prop book which will undertake debt transactions in the realty space.
“We will build and scale up both the businesses though it will take two more weeks to finalise exact numbers,” Mittal said.
At ICICI Prudential, Mittal was among those who were responsible for leading the commercial rental office fund, managing transactions from mezzanine fund and also leading the fundraising exercise. In financial year 2013, he spearheaded two fundraising initiatives, raising Rs 1,300 crore.
Harvesp Mehta is the director of the realty fund and has been managing the fund. He is also the head of investments.
The company’s real estate fund business has seen many exits. In September last year, it hired Somak Ghosh as the co-chief executive officer of Motilal Oswal Private Equity. He was responsible for growing the group’s real estate fund business and establishing a sustainable social impact fund. Even Anuranjan Mohnot, vice president of the real estate fund business went on to head Amplus Realty Fund, a domestic realty fund promoted by Sanjay Lalbhai, Jayesh Shah and Rohit Choksi. The fund is raising Rs 200 crore.
Motilal Oswal Private Equity has raised funds for India Business Excellence Fund (IBEF) and India Realty Excellence Fund (IREF) to invest in mid-market companies and real estate projects, respectively. IREF, launched in 2008, is a Rs 200-crore domestic real estate fund focussed on investing in real estate projects in metros and tier-1 cities in India. The average ticket size per project is Rs 20-30 crore. The fund has already made seven investments across asset classes.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
