Two giant Indian malls, in Nagpur and Amritsar, have been snapped up by Virtuous Retail South Asia for US$100 million.
The 1 million sqft Amritsar centre and 700,000 sqft Nagpur property were bought from Tata Realty and Infrastructure’s Trilium shopping mall portfolio, according to a report on Livemint. Virtuous, which is building a portfolio of Indian malls, is the retail development subsidiary of investment company The Xander Group. The company also recently acquired a 20-acre site from Raymond Limited in Thane, near Mumbai, where it plans to develop a mall.
“This has been a year of active investments for us to broaden our shopping centre portfolio,” said Sid Yog, VRSA’s founder and chairman told Livemint. “Going forward, we would also explore acquisition opportunities in Kolkata and Hyderabad and add properties to the cities we are already present in.
“We believe even gateway regional cities like Nagpur and Amritsar have significant population and retail consumption to make them attractive for us.”.
VRSA now has more than 13 million sqft of Indian malls operating or under development across Delhi-National Capital Region(NCR), Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai along with smaller cities such as Surat, Mohali, Amritsar and Nagpur.
The company says it plans to renovate and rebrand the newly acquired Indian malls.
Meanwhile, Sanjay Dutt, MD and CEO of Trilium says the sale reflects the company’s strategy of exiting tier 2 and 3 cities.