Altico Capital, the non-banking finance company, promoted by Clearwater Capital (now Fiera Capital), Abu Dhabi Investment Council and Varde Partners, has invested Rs 120 crore in affordable plotting project with the Century Group, in Bengaluru. This is Altico’s second investment with Century after initially co-investing Rs 765 crore with Piramal in a portfolio of projects in 2015.
The new investment will be towards a recently launched plotting project in North Bengaluru by the name of Century Greens wherein Century is developing plots in range of Rs 25–50 lakh category. “The new investment is against an ongoing plotting project which fits into our philosophy of investing in affordable and mid-market projects of ticket sizes below Rs 50 lakh,” said Sanjay Grewal, CEO of Altico Capital.
With higher launches in the affordable segment and attempts by developers to reduce ticket sizes to attract a wider spectrum of homebuyers, average apartment sizes have shrunk over the past couple of years. Residential launches and sales both having bottomed out in 2017, Bengaluru’s residential market witnessed a remarkable comeback in H1 2018 on both parameters. Bengaluru saw new launches of approx. 15,500 units in H1 2018 (up 11 per cent year on year) and sales of about 25,800 units in H1 2018 (up 22 per cent year on year).
Altico recently sanctioned a facility of Rs 450 crore across five transactions, thereby, underwriting a total saleable area of 6.3 million square feet. Of the five projects, one project is brownfield and the rest are greenfield mid income and affordable residential projects spread across various locations in the north, northeast and Whitefield area.
"We are very pleased to be associated with Assetz, an institutionally backed, professionally managed firm led by Ben Solomon which has a solid-track record of over 10 years spread across all real estate asset classes including residential, commercial, warehousing and logistics having delivered over 6-7 million square feet," said Grewal.
Bengaluru continues to be a robust residential market and enjoys the highest office space absorption amongst all major Indian cities. Bengaluru witnessed gross leasing activity of about 12 million square feet during January-September 2018 and new completions of about 9 million square feet during the same period. Given the strength of the Bengaluru market, Sanjay Grewal added that Altico would certainly look to scale up its exposure to the real estate sector here which currently stands at 12 per cent of the overall assets under management.