Private equity investors and overseas developers are looking to invest in various development projects

Increased infrastructure spending gives a thrust to the  Realty sector and allied sectors. This can automatically translate into higher demand for logistics and warehousing. Moving forward, we expect greater institutional participation in logistics, especially warehousing develop ment. We will have more funds with specialist fund managers to concentrate and manage such investments. With implementation of GST, scale from logistics will move from unorganised to organised and mere warehousing is likely to make way for integrated logistics parks.This will surely see private equity players'and investors'curiosity about logistics going up

Among China's largest developers, Dalian Wanda Group, signed a pact with the Haryana government last year to produce Wanda Industrial New City with an investment of $10 billion over 10 years. An agreement signed between China Fortune Land Development Company and Haryana state will also see large format industrial parks appear in the state.

Some other announcements such as for instance development of smart cities by ZTE and Neemrana Japanese investment zone are pointing at rising appetite for such assets.

We plan to set up a logistics and warehousing division and raise a dedicated logistics and warehousing fund to invest across India. It will develop around 10 million sq ft of warehousing and logistics space around Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, and Nagpur -cities with industrial hubs.

Based on experts, the logistics expenses could be set off as input costs by manufacturers once Goods & Services Tax is implemented.This is expected to create warehouse hubs located from expensive urban locations equally attractive. In these locations propertyin Mumbai  will come in larger format and thus more and more Integrated Logistics Parks could be developed which will offer further value add the supply chain management.

Tax parity across states means logistics hubs could be developed on the basis of connectivitay rather than octroi boundaries. Disadvantages of crossing over tax jurisdictions in the supply chain are gone and GST supplies a tax neutral environment to logistics industry.

Besides logistics, key leasehold retail realty assets around the world attended on the private equity players'radar. Reasons with this include well-managed Grade-A malls starting to take pleasure from better occupancy with rent escalation on the cards following a lull of six to seven years. Such well-managed assets entities will continue steadily to attract investor focus.

In 2016, GIC bought a 50% stake in Viviana Mall of Sheth Developers in Mumbai, Blackstone acquired the retail portfolio of Alpha G Corp through an entity level deal, and Blackstone also bought 50% stake in Pune's Westend Mall.

Various new regulations such as for instance easing foreign investment for single-brand retailers, longer shopping hours and an updated framework for establishing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have attracted the eye of varied private equity funds like Blackstone, Xander, GIC, Morgan Stanley towards the India property sector.