Nisus Finance plans to set up ₹2,000 crore land fund, SM Reit platform

AIF to scale up Dubai investments by Rs 16,000 crore over next year

Alternative investment firm Nisus Finance is planning to set up a ₹2,000-crore land fund this year, with an initial corpus of ₹1,000 crore, followed by another ₹1,000 crore next year. The company is also preparing to launch a small and medium real estate investment trust (SM Reit) platform worth ₹2,000 crore, a top executive said.

 

While accelerating the land fund and SM Reit plans, Nisus is aiming to double its assets under management (AUM), which stood at around ₹1,900 crore as of the first half of FY26 (H1 FY26) across Dubai and India, by the end of this year.

 

“As far as India is concerned, the strategy continues to be the last-mile financing or credit space and bridge financing or credit for development projects,” said Amit Goenka, founder, chairperson and managing director of Nisus Finance, in an interaction with Business Standard.

 

Goenka said the firm is also planning to scale up investments in Dubai, with plans to deploy nearly ₹16,000 crore there over the next 12 months, focusing on ready, rented, freehold assets across commercial, retail, residential and industrial segments.

 

Nisus’ Dubai assets under management stood at over ₹1,000 crore (around $110 million) as of the first half of FY26 (H1 FY26). Goenka said the firm could scale up to $1.5 billion in assets before launching its next product, though supply constraints in Grade-A tenanted buildings could limit expansion.

 

For its land fund, Nisus will prioritise immediate developments such as warehousing, data centres, industrial parks and plotted development rather than townships.

 

“We will create a land fund that can acquire land parcels in key nodes and strategic locations, starting from Maharashtra across Mumbai and Pune to other opportunities along the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), Bengaluru-Hyderabad corridor, and such key locations where we see large infrastructure, including industrial and warehousing corridors. Mumbai 3.0 is a large driver,” Goenka said.

 

For its SM Reit plans, the firm will focus on small and medium enterprise (SME) office spaces and high-street retail, with the aim of giving access to high-quality but smaller assets to a larger investor pool.

 

“While there is about 650–700 million square feet (msf) of Reitable space available, the amount of space that is under Reits is much smaller — less than 7–8 per cent of the total Reitable space. In our view, the larger footprint lies in small office space,” Goenka added.

 

According to CBRE, India’s SM Reit market is projected to exceed $75 billion, drawing from a pool of more than 500 msf of eligible office, logistics and retail assets. SM Reits control smaller properties valued between ₹50 crore and ₹500 crore.

 

“Since one scheme under an SM Reit can only hold assets of up to ₹500 crore, we will do maybe four schemes to get ₹2,000 crore of assets in the market. That is the roadmap as far as India is concerned over the next 24 months,” Goenka said. Nisus is in the process of obtaining an SM Reit licence.

 

Speaking about return expectations, Goenka said land funds tend to be in the 30 per cent range in terms of internal rate of return (IRR). “If one is buying and selling in one year, they must make at least 1.3 to 1.5x of their investment. For SM Reits, the typical yield would be 8 to 10 per cent with a certain growth in rent yields and cap rate compressions over time,” he added.

 

Earlier, Nisus reported consolidated total income of ₹229.05 crore for Q3 FY26. Its profit after tax for the quarter stood at ₹21.02 crore, while its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) margin for the same period was 20.81 per cent.