Alta Capital, global investors in race for Xander's ₹2,000 crore warehouse assets in India
Mumbai: Private equity firm Alta Capital's logistics platform LogiCap is among a handful of investors in the race to acquire Singapore-based Xander Group's warehousing portfolio in Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata, three people familiar with the matter told Mint.
The 3.5 million square feet portfolio has also seen bids from Horizon Industrial Parks, CapitaLand Ltd and Firstspace Realty-backed Ascendas Firstspace, and Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing (MSREI) in the first round, one of the people quoted above said, requesting anonymity. "IndoSpace is also expected to place its bid shortly," the person added.
'Alta Capital may be inching closer to negotiating a deal at a cap rate of around 7.75%," another person quoted above added. A cap rate is the annual return a property generates relative to its market value.
Real estate investment advisor JLL has been appointed as the banker for the deal, one of the persons quoted above confirmed.
While Xander Group, Alta Capital and JLL declined to comment on the development, queries sent to JLL, Ascendas, Horizon, MSREI and IndoSpace remained unanswered at the time of publishing.
The Economic Times had earlier reported that Xander was looking to divest a significant portion of its warehousing assets, with an estimated valuation of over ₹2,000 crore.
Investors turn selective
The potential deal comes at a time when the Indian warehousing sector is seeing heightened activity, with multiple investors looking to monetize portfolios.
Mint reported in April that Xander and ESR's India arm were exploring exits from their warehousing assets in India, capitalizing on the sustained investor interest in industrial real estate.
Singapore's Xander Group, which has investments across India's office and retail segments, had launched a $250 million industrial real estate platform in 2019.
ESR India, a joint venture between Hong Kong-based ESR Group and Germany's Allianz Real Estate, is a prominent logistics and industrial real estate firm with around 10 million sqft of warehousing assets across cities in the country.
'We are seeing more exits in the Indian warehousing segment now," said Anuj Puri, chairman of Anarock Group, a real estate consultancy. Major investors such as global private equity firm Bain Capital and Canadian real estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge Inc. recently sold their Indian warehousing stakes, he added.
Earlier this week, Mint reported that warehouses, which emerged as a key investment segment the past 4-5 years, are witnessing investors becoming increasingly selective now, prioritizing grade A assets in top-tier cities and favouring tech-enabled and environmentally sustainable warehouses.
Private equity investments in Indian real estate hit $4.2 billion in 2024, a 32% surge from the year prior, show data from Knight Frank India, a real estate consultancy.
Warehousing led the charge, accounting for 45% of these investments and surpassing the office sector, which had held the highest share of PE investments since 2017.
However, due to a prolonged period of elevated interest rates in the West and the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, there were no private equity deals in the warehousing sector during the March quarter of 2025 (January-March), Vivek Rathi, national director, research, Knight Frank India, told Mint.
Also Read: The world's largest warehouse firm re-enters India with a $500 million purse
Alta Capital has been actively building its warehousing portfolio through LogiCap, which it launched in 2022 to invest in tech-enabled logistics infrastructure. It currently operates a footprint of over 12 million sq. ft. through its brands Pragati Warehousing and EcoBox Industrial Parks.
In November, Alta acquired more than 2.5 million sq. ft. of leased logistics assets from IndoSpace in a deal worth over $100 million ( ₹840 crore). In January, LogiCap's new development arm EcoBox acquired 50 acres of land in Mannur, Chennai, for its first project.
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