COVID-19 distress asset fund: Bengaluru-based real estate platform raises Rs 80 crore in 2 weeks

Bengaluru-based PropShare Capital, a tech-enabled commercial real estate investment platform, has closed a Grade A distressed listing offering for Rs 80 crore with participation from over 150  investors across high network individuals, family offices, retail and institutional investors including a Japanese family office, within a span of two weeks.

The fundraising for its 1st COVID-19 Distressed Opportunities PMS offering (PDOF I) was carried out entirely through its online platform without distributors or middlemen. "While the demand was in excess of Rs 500 crore, the firm chose to make a first closing within two weeks in order to be in a position to deploy money quickly as distressed opportunities become available," a company statement said.

The company remains bullish on back office leasing as it expects multinationals to continue to build teams in cities like Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Gurgaon to offshore high cost jobs in the west to lower cost destinations like India. It also expects delays in construction timelines to lead to an uptick in rents in the medium term due to the migrant crisis, supply of critical building materials and physical distancing.

"While the pandemic has created stress in the larger real estate market, it has created a unique window of opportunity for investors to access Grade A commercial real estate properties at higher yields and lower prices. We believe PDOF gives PropShare a significant advantage in deploying investor capital quickly and efficiently in high yielding Grade A assets emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic," Kunal Moktan, Co-founder & CEO, PropShare Capital said.

The company said that 72 percent of the investors in PDOF were existing investors. Indian investors, which comprised 67 percent of all investors, contributed to 71 percent of total funds raised. While 49 percent of all investors were IT professionals, 32 percent were from the finance background, the company said.

Established in 2015, the PropShare Capital platform currently manages over Rs 330 crore of investments with more than 50,000 users at the moment.

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