Warburg Pincus and Mumbai-based developer Runwal Group have formed a joint venture (JV) to create a shopping mall platform. Both partners will commit USD 200 million each in the form of equity and raise another USD 600 million in debt to create a corpus of USD one billion to invest in and develop shopping malls across Tier-1, 2, and 3 cities in India.
The platform will look to build large, destination malls, as well as smaller hypermarket and cinema-anchored community malls. This is Warburg Pincus’s first investment in the retail development sector in India, after putting Rs 1,800 crore in Piramal Realty for the latter’s residential business and USD 250 million in Embassy Industrial Parks.
The Warburg Pincus affiliate and Runwal Developers will each hold a 50 percent stake in the platform. The platform will be seeded with several projects, which are under development, and will also have the option of acquiring some of Runwal Group’s operational retail malls.
The JV partners are looking to acquire both greenfield and brownfield projects. The Runwal Group already operates four malls in Mumbai, with a total leasable area of around two million sq ft. These include its flagship R-City mall in suburban Ghatkopar, with a total leasable area of 1.2 million sq ft.