Xander bets big on India real estate

After a decade of investing in real estate in India, global investment firm Xander Group Inc. is actively looking at fresh investments across retail, commercial office and residential sectors even as the country’s property market reels under a slowdown.

Over the past 10 years, Xander has invested over $2 billion in equity in real estate in India from its various platforms. Xander, which builds retail shopping malls under its development arm Virtuous Retail, has financed residential projects through a series of real estate funds and engages in debt lending through its non-banking financial company (NBFC) Xander Finance.

With the National Democratic Alliance government relaxing foreign direct investment (FDI) norms earlier in November, international investors such as Xander are finding newer and easier ways of investing in real estate.

“We are very excited about it. FDI rules with regard to smaller projects make it very interesting because they allow us to do more retail. Size is no longer a constraint so I can now do community centres. Instead of a 1 million sq. ft project, which takes 6-7 years or more, now we can do 100,000-150,000 sq. ft city centre community spaces. That can be the rollout strategy across the country, and not just the top 10 markets. We can also buy existing assets, which is small, because there isn’t much to buy from,” Siddharth Yog, founder of Xander Group and chairman of the investment committee, said.

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