Apollo Global to back Olympia for building 1.1 mn sq ft IT park in India

US-based private equity fund Apollo Global will back Olympia Cyberspace, a unit of the Chennai-based Olympia group, to build a 1.1 million sq ft information technology park here. The fund will infuse $15 million (Rs 104 crore) initially in a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to promote the Rs 750-crore project. It has committed another $5-7 million. Apollo Global is one of the world’s largest alternate investment platforms, with $270 billion in assets under management.

Ajit Kumar Chordia, managing director at the Olympia group, said the PE fund would have 49 per cent stake in the SPV and Olympia the rest. The park will be constructed within three years at the locality of Guindy, close to the city’s heart. The ongoing demand for office space in the city has prompted the move. “There is hardly any IT space in the city, where demand is 4.5-mn sq ft,” said Chordia.

The facility will target multinational corporations that benefit from the state-of-the-art amenities at a good location. Olympia has already built the Olympia Tech Park, the largest and one of the oldest IT office locations in Chennai, also the city’s first and largest ‘gold-rated green building’. It has many globally known names as tenants. In the past four years, Chennai has attracted $1.7 billion in PE investment, of which Singapore-based investors alone put $930 million.  

Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Corp has also invested $25 million in a residential project by Shriram Properties, the Shriram Park 23 in southern Chennai.