Puravankara arm takes private equity route to raise Rs 750 crore

Provident Housing and Infrastructure Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary of Bangalore-based real estate company Puravankara Projects Ltd, is in talks with four overseas private equity funds to raise about Rs 750 crore to acquire land for its affordable housing projects, a source close to the development said.

“Total project cost is Rs 8,000 crore. Of this, Rs 750 crore will be raised through private equity funding at the project level. While one is an Asia-based fund, the remaining three are from the US,” he said.

Last week, Provident Housing and Infrastructure announced that it will invest a total of Rs 8,000 crore in seven affordable housing projects spread across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Mysore in the first phase.

The company plans to raise the remaining Rs 7,250 crore through a mix of internal accruals, debt and customer advances. He also said that the company could dilute between 30-40 per cent stake in each of the affordable housing projects. In the second phase, the company plans to take its low-cost housing projects to Delhi, Kolkata, Kochi, Jaipur, Pune and Nagpur.

Increasingly, real estate developers are foraying into the affordable housing segment in a bid to offset the slowdown in sales of mid-income and high-end apartments.

“In the last 6-12 months, there have been negligible sales in the high-end residential segment. Developers are eyeing the low-income segment as it is also a volumes game,” an analyst at a domestic brokerage said. In May, Delhi-based Omaxe had announced investment of Rs 8,000 crore to build around 10 lakh low-cost houses over the next 10 years. Currently, Puravankara Projects has a land bank of over 125 million sq ft.

Nearly 65 per cent of the company’s land bank is in Bangalore. It is developing 20 million sq ft of residential and commercial projects.

In a July report, Citigroup Global Markets had downgraded its rating on the Puravankara stock to “hold” from “buy” and cut the price target to Rs 212 per share from Rs 358.