Xander buys Bengaluru office asset for $54.5 mn

By Keshav Sunkara

  • 06 Feb 2018

Alternative investment firm The Xander Group has bought an office building of around 2,50,000 sq ft at Embassy Golf Links Business Park in Bengaluru for Rs 350 crore ($54.5 million) from Kolhapur-based Sanjay Ghodawat Group, according to a media report.

The office building named Pinehurst has been occupied by Fidelity Investments, Mint reported.

It is a strategic sale which will help Sanjay Ghodawat Group rebuild its real estate portfolio to 2 million sq ft of pre-leased properties in three years, Sanjay Ghodawat, chairman of Sanjay Ghodawat Group, told the business newspaper.

The diversified Sanjay Ghodawat Group bought the building in Embassy Golf Links in 2003, according to the report.

An email query sent to Xander Group did not elicit a response.

Last December, VCCircle reported Xander Group is looking at buying alternative investment firm Blackstone Group’s two IT parks in Pune.

Rohan Sikri, senior partner at Xander Group, told VCCircle in January that the investment firm had acquired Shriram Gateway (now Gateway Office Park), Noida Towers (now Express Corporate Park) and an asset in Bengaluru in the previous 10 months.

Sikri said the firm has invested roughly Rs 2,850 crore to acquire the underlying portfolio of these assets.

Xander Group has been aggressively buying office properties of late, and has accumulated a portfolio of six million sq ft.

In one of the biggest real estate transactions, The Xander Group had acquired The Gateway, a Chennai-based SEZ by South India-focussed developer Shriram Properties, for $190 million, and had committed another $160 million for its expansion.

Recently, it had also bought a mall in Mohali, Punjab, for Rs 700 crore. The deal was made through its retail arm, Virtuous Retail.

Earlier, Xander had bought Express Trade Towers, a fully-leased 500,000 sq ft IT park in Noida, from IL&FS Investment Managers for Rs 300 crore.