HDFC Capital Advisors Ltd, a wholly-owned unit of HDFC Ltd, has marked the initial close for Scheme 2 of its HDFC Capital Affordable Real Estate Fund–3 (H-CARE 3) at $376 million (around Rs 3,000 crore). This is the fourth fund raised by HDFC Capital for investments in affordable housing.
A year ago, it had closed $1.88 billion of H-CARE 3, taking the Schemes 1 and 2 combined total estimated fund corpus to about $2.2 billion (including potential reinvestments). This has made H-CARE 3 one of the largest funds raised to invest in the residential real estate sector in India, the company said in a statement.
The latest fundraise has taken HDFC-3’s Scheme 1 and 2 funds combined and H - CARE 1 and 2, raised in 2016 and 2017 respectively, to create a $3.1 billion funding platform, HDFC Capital said.
The first two funds together have a corpus of over $1.1 billion targeting affordable and mid-income residential projects in India’s top 20 cities. H-CARE 3 will provide long-term, flexible equity and debt funding across the life cycle of affordable and mid-income housing projects including early-stage funding.
In addition, the fund will also invest in technology companies (construction technology, fin-tech, sustainability-tech etc.) engaged in the affordable housing ecosystem. The H-CARE 3 funds are expected to be committed towards investments over the next 3-4 years. In order to achieve this objective, the company is in active discussions with leading global investors to raise additional funds to be invested in affordable housing in India.
