StanChart PE-Tata Realty JV in biggest land deal this year
MUMBAI: In the biggest land deal in the year so far, a joint venture of Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd (TRIL) and Standard Chartered Private Equity has acquired a 47.5 acre plot at the Thane-Belapur industrial area close to Mumbai for ₹325 crore, two people aware of the development said.
The joint venture will use the land to build around 6.5 million sq. ft of Grade A offices for information technology companies, the first of the two people cited above said.
The plot belongs to the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), a government body that develops and leases out industrial land to investors and firms.
Real estate consultant Cushman & Wakefield, the property adviser to the transaction, declined to comment. Tata Realty did not respond to an email sent on Thursday while Standard Chartered PE declined to comment.
“TRIL has been eyeing this market for the last three-four years. Thane-Belapur road is becoming an attractive micro market due to the increasing commercial activities specially IT park development happening around the area,” the second person said. In 2015, Tata Realty, a unit of Tata Sons Ltd, and Standard Chartered formed a ₹3,000 crore investment platform to buy commercial assets. In June last year, it bought out commercial assets of Gurgaon-based builder M3M for ₹250 crore.
The Thane-Belapur deal comes at a time when outright sale of land has significantly slowed down as developers increasingly opt for joint development or revenue sharing model with land owners.
No major land deal has happened this year. The last big land sale (in value terms) was in December 2016 when realty firm K Raheja Corp. and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC announced they would jointly acquire a three-acre land parcel in Mumbai’s prime Worli locality for ₹610 crore from Siemens Ltd.
Some of the other large land deals in the last one year include K Raheja Corp. acquiring 62.25 acres in Navi Mumbai from the Mafatlal Group for ₹355 crore and Godrej Properties buying 12 acres in Sarjapur in Bengaluru from Mumbai-based builder HDIL Ltd for nearly ₹100 crore.
However, many large corporate land deals, particularly in Mumbai suburbs, have been stuck due to regulatory hurdles and price expectation mismatch between the buyer and the seller.