APG Asset Management is partnering with the Xander Group in an Indian retail property joint venture.
Three retail assets from a Xander-sponsored fund and worth $300m (€270.3m) will seed the venture.
The transaction is the largest single deal in the retail real estate sector in India, APG said.
The Dutch pension fund asset manager and Xander committed an additional $150m to the joint venture, giving it $300m of investment capacity.
The two partners will have equal representation on the board of the new Singapore-based company, Virtuous Retail South Asia, to be chaired by Sid Yog, founder of Virtuous Retail.
Sachin Doshi, managing director and head of private real estate investments for Asia Pacific at APG, said: “This is a landmark transaction for Indian retail real estate at a time when the sector is at an inflection point.
“With the arrival and expansion of major global and domestic brands, coupled with the severe shortage of high-quality malls, organised retail is in the early stages of take-off in the country.”
The transaction allows APG to get “immediate scale and access to a portfolio of dominant shopping centres and management capability”, Doshi said.
Virtuous Retail’s Indian management and operating platform will move to VRSA.
APG and Xander will hold 77% and 23% in the partnership, respectively.
Rohit George, who was responsible for overseeing Xander’s retail portfolio in India, has relocated to Singapore and joined VRSA as managing director and an executive director on the board.
The partnership is similar in structure to a previous joint venture APG agreed in 2014 with Xander, set up to target India’s office sector.
The joint venture had an initial $300m to invest in income-generating, institutional-grade properties.
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