Singapore’s Keppel Land to buy 1 million sq ft in Piramal Realty’s office project for Rs 1,200 crore

Singapore-based diversified conglomerate Keppel Corporation’s property arm Keppel Land is set to acquire part of Piramal Realty’s commercial development Piramal Agastya Corporate Park in central Mumbai’s Kurla locality for more than Rs 1,200 crore, said persons with direct knowledge of the development.
This will be among the largest outright commercial real estate transactions so far this year.

Keppel Land has already signed the term sheet to acquire nearly 1 million sq ft of commercial real estate spread across a total six entire floors in this multi-tenanted tower. The transaction will exclude nearly 2 lakh sq ft office space occupied by Piramal enterprises.

“The transaction is nearing conclusion as most of the processes have been completed and a final agreement will be signed in the next few weeks,” said one of the persons mentioned above.

Piramal Agastya, spread over 16 acres on LBS Marg, is one of the country’s largest non-information technology (IT) commercial developments, with a total project size of nearly 2 million sq ft.

Of the total development, Keppel Land is buying 1 million sq ft, which has been completed and substantially leased. Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, Piramal Enterprises, French sports goods retailer Decathlon, Metropolitan Stock Exchange and Axis Securities are among the key existing office occupiers here.

ET’s separate email queries to Keppel Land and Piramal Realty remained unanswered until the time of going to press. Transaction advisor CBRE South Asia declined to comment on the development.

Launched in 2012, Piramal Realty counts Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus among its investors. Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus, two international equity partners, have invested about $434 million in Piramal Realty at the entity level, which is the largest private equity commitment to an Indian real estate company at the company level.

Keppel Land is geographically diversified in Asia, with Singapore, China and Vietnam as its key markets, while it continues to scale up in other markets including India and Indonesia.

In India, the company has entered into an alliance with Rustomjee Group to build an integrated township in Thane near Mumbai. Separately, Keppel Land has also entered into a joint venture with Emerald Haven Realty, a TVS Group company, to develop a freehold condominium project on a nearly 6-acre land parcel in South Chennai.

The new deal between Keppel Land and Piramal Realty reinforces continued interest of global institutional investors including private equity, sovereign funds and insurance companies in Indian commercial real estate on the back of rapid urbanisation, favourable regulatory norms and high demand for residential and office premises across the country.

The appetite for Indian realty among global institutional investors continues to be strong as indicated by major foreign funds like Blackstone Group, Brookfield Asset Management, GIC, Xander, Ascendas, CPPIB, Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs that are expanding their investments into the sector.

Private equity investments into the real estate sector have continued to rise over the last few years and even the last two years despite the pandemic scenario. The surge is mostly driven by foreign funds investing in India as the real estate recovery is now fully visible and the structural long-term changes are fructifying.

Both global and domestic institutional investors continue to eye a number of investment opportunities across residential, mixed-use, commercial, retail, industrial and other real estate segments in India.