Virtuous Retail South Asia Pte. Ltd, an arm of The Xander Group, has acquired Tata Realty & Infrastructure Ltd’s Trilium shopping centre portfolio for $100 million (Rs 700 crore).
The acquisition is in line with Virtuous Retail’s pan-India expansion strategy, it said in a statement.
The acquired portfolio includes a shopping mall each in Nagpur and Amritsar. The Amritsar mall has an area of 1 million sq ft and sits within a larger campus that includes the Taj Swarna hotel. The 700,000 sq ft property in Nagpur is located at a major junction that connects six arterial roads.
Sid Yog, Xander’s founder and Virtuous Retail’s chairman, said the acquisition provides an opportunity to convert two well-built assets into people-centric centres under the company’s flagship VR brand.
Rohit George, executive managing director at Virtuous Retail, said the deal will expand the firm’s operational retail portfolio from 5.4 million sq ft to 7.1 million sq ft in six cities. Apart from Nagpur and Amritsar, the other four cities are Chennai, Bengaluru, Surat and Chandigarh.
The total portfolio will jump to 13 million sq ft in eight cities once the under-construction malls in Delhi and Mumbai—spread over 5 million sq ft—and the soon-to-be-opened VR Mantri Arena in west Bengaluru—spread over 1 million sq ft—start operating, he said.