Real estate focused investment bank Credberg Advisory, backed by former partners at Indian arm of Brookfield Financial (BFIN), is planning to invest over Rs 1,000 crore in income-producing office assets across top six property markets of India.
Creberg is foraying into investment management and looking to raise its maiden fund Credberg Real estate office opportunities fund 1 (CREOOF-1). The company has already formed a new platform Credberg Investment Management to undertake its foray into the fund business.
The proposed over Rs 1,000 crore investment will be supported by this new fund worth $75 million or over Rs 570 crore and the project level leverage through Lease Rental Discounting (LRD).
Credberg Investment Management (CIM) is co- founded by Pawan Swamy and Adil Engineer both of whom serve as Managing Partners at the firm. Swamy and Engineer have earlier handled assignments as Managing Partner and Partner, respectively, at Brookfield Financial before founding Credberg.
“Our aim is to leverage the group’s strong local knowledge, deep understanding of the capital markets and age-old relationships to drive superior returns for global and local investors and to build out an independent principal side business to better position the group for expansion,” Pawan Swamy, Managing Partner, CIM, told .
The company has already received its approval from the capital market regulator the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for the proposed category II Alternate Investment Fund (AIF).
The firm is currently in fund raising mode and is focussed primarily on global investors looking at taking exposure to the ever-growing office real estate market in India that has already attracted global institutional investors like Blackstone, Brookfield, GIC, CPPIB and Ivanhoe Cambridge.
“Indian commercial real estate has retained a strong position and continues to be a preferred destination for global investors driven by robust office space take up, falling vacancies and stable rentals. It is this opportunity that we want to focus on to provide global investors superior risk adjusted returns,” said Adil Engineer, Managing Partner, CIM.
The proposed fund CREOOF-1 will mainly focus on office income producing assets in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad and Chennai and focus on deal sizes where there is a vacuum for capital in the market. Going forward, the platform will also look to raise funds focusing on different asset classes and across the entire development cycle.
The new venture has appointed Ridham Kakrania as Principal – Investments who has earlier worked with portfolio companies of the Xander Group and the Blackstone Group. Kakrania has over 7 years of experience in real estate and asset management with understanding of finance and investments in the property business.
Credberg is a real estate focussed investment bank and its founders, in their personal capacity, have advised on deals worth over $5 billion across the entire capital stack and multiple asset classes.
Against the backdrop of an ongoing policy overhaul in the last few years, rising investor confidence, enhanced transparency, and sustained growth in demand for grade-A commercial office space, experts believe the investment momentum in the Indian real estate sector will continue to rise.
The appetite for Indian real estate assets among global institutional investors continues to be strong. Major foreign funds like Blackstone Group, Brookfield Asset Management, GIC, Xander, Ascendas, CPPIB, Warburg Pincus, and Goldman Sachs have been deploying funds and are strengthening their exposure in this segment.
