Homegrown warehousing and industrials investor and development management platform Welspun One, which wrapped up raising capital for its latest fund in July last year, has launched a co-investment plan to expand the latest vehicle’s portfolio.
Welspun One launched its co-investment sleeve with commitments expected to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore ($114.4 million) from the plan, with projects valued at about Rs 600 crore already identified for co-investors, the company said on Wednesday.
The plan will likely provide additional dry powder to the second flagship vehicle, Welspun One Logistics Parks II, increasing the fund's total portfolio to 14-15 projects from the current nine. This will translate into about 5 million square feet of additional investment pipeline, according to Welspun One.
Additionally, it has wrapped up deployment of the Rs 2,275-crore corpus of the second fund, Welspun One said. It had deployed about 75% of the capital as of December.
“The rapid commitment of Fund 2 reaffirms our ability to efficiently deploy capital, identify high-quality opportunities, and execute with discipline,” said Anshul Singhal, managing director at Welspun One.
“The launch of our co-investment program is a natural extension of this strategy, allowing us to capitalize on large-scale opportunities while maintaining prudent diversification,” he added.
The co-investment plan will, according to the company, help increase its aggregate portfolio size to about 22 million square feet, to generate a projected net operating income of about Rs 1,100 crore (or $130 million) upon completion. This may also help increase its assets under management to $1.3 billion.
In December, the company had said it aimed to increase its portfolio size by 2028 to about 32 million square feet from 16 million square feet then. At the time, it had identified 8 million square feet pipeline to support the expansion.
Alongside, it had announced its plans to roll out a Rs 4,000-crore successor vehicle, its third alternative investment fund. It did not disclose the timeline of the fund launch at the time.
Welspun One marked the final close of its second fund in July, overshooting its hard cap of Rs 2,000 crore.
In December, Welspun One announced an investment of Rs 800 crore to develop an urban distribution centre in Thane, Maharashtra, in partnership with World Trade Centers Association. Last month, it announced an additional $237 million investment to expand its Mumbai warehouse located in the special economic zone next to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port.
“The WTC Thane development is seeing strong pre-leasing traction, with commitments nearing closure at benchmark rates of Rs 130-135 per square feet for urban logistics and Rs 150-160 per square feet for commercial use,” it said.
In the last update, Welspun One said that it had also started exiting its investments from the maiden AIF, Welspun One Logistics Park I, a Rs-500-crore fund. While it announced its first exit from the fund in March, it said it had exited about 40% of the fund after making another liquidity move.
