Private equity firm Alta Capital's logistics platform LogiCap is among a handful of investors in the race to acquire Singapore-based The Xander Group Inc.'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 Development Management Pvt. Ltd, 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 INR 20.00 billion.
The potential deal comes at a time when the Indian warehousing sector is seeing heightened activity, with multiple investors looking to monetize portfolios.
