Xander Investment Management, the private equity real estate arm of global investor The Xander Group Inc., said it has bought office building Weikfield IT Citi Info Park in Pune for Rs 900 crore ($130 million).
Spread across an area of 1.1 million square feet, the office park located in Viman Nagar is leased to diversified tenants like Maersk, WNS, Whirlpool, PTC, Nihilent, and Tavisca.
“Through this acquisition, we add a quality Pune asset with substantial growth potential to our ongoing India Office Value-Add strategy. The asset nicely complements our existing, 100% owned and operated portfolio across key Indian cities, and enables us to offer a strategic Pune location to tenants,” said Arpit Singh, principal, investments, Xander Investment Management, Singapore.
Xander Group has been an active investor in India’s real estate market and has one of the biggest portfolios of commercial and retail assets in the country. Late last year, it signed a pact worth $350 million with Hyderabad developer Phoenix Group for office buildings covering an area of 4.5 million square feet in the corporate district of Gachibowli, a suburb of Hyderabad.
Before that, it bought an office building called Pinehurst in Bengaluru from Kolhapur-based Sanjay Ghodawat Group.
It is also planning to set up a platform focused on warehousing and logistics assets in the country.
Headquartered in Singapore, the firm has been actively investing in India for over 14 years, and has acquired and/or developed over 83 million square feet across all real estate asset classes, including office, retail, industrial, budget and luxury hotels, warehousing, and residential condominiums and townships.
The latest deal marks a significant addition to India’s commercial real estate market, a segment that has constantly outdone its peer asset classes. Commercial real estate continues to attract a bigger share of capital flow in the country. In the first half of 2019, it attracted more than 60% of capital flow – a trend that has not changed in the last many years.
Shobhit Agarwal, managing director and chief executive, Anarock Capital, said, “Even while caution prevails over current market dynamics, the incumbent government’s proactive initiatives across sectors will doubtlessly cause more private equity inflows into the real estate sector. While Indian commercial real estate's overall attraction for institutional funds is now well-established, the residential sector is also likely to become increasingly interesting on the back of the government's determined push for affordable housing.”
