ASK closes third opportunistic fund

Mumbai-based real estate investment manager ASK Group has raised its largest ever India-focused private equity real estate fund, corralling INR 13.73 billion (€180 million; $201 million) in the final close.

ASK Real Estate Special Opportunities Fund II was launched by the firm in year-end 2014 with an INR 10 billion initial fundraising target and a hard cap of INR 5 billion. The majority of the limited partners in the fund are family offices and domestic high-net-worth investors.

The capital raised via the fund, the third in a series of India-focused opportunity vehicles launched by ASK, will be invested in residential and mixed-use real estate developments across Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad.

“ASK provides growth capital to the developer partners as we believe in equity returns. This is our third domestic real estate fund raised in the last seven years and the previous two domestic real estate funds are fully committed,” said Sunil Rohokale, managing director and chief executive officer of ASK Group. “We have made five full and seven partial exits from the first two funds in just over four years.”

Around 25 percent of the fund’s equity has already been deployed. The most recent investment was a INR 3.65 billion capital infusion into a residential project for middle income households in Mumbai being developed by Rajesh LifeSpaces in December last year.

The firm is targeting to deploy all of the fund’s capital in the next 18 to 24 months. Expected equity returns from the investments made via the fund are between 25 and 30 percent.

The second fund in the series, ASK Real Estate Special Opportunities Fund I, is close to being fully deployed. The firm has already committed around INR 1.2 billion for the ninth and final investment from the INR 10 billion vehicle, a residential development project. The deal is in the process of being signed.

ASK Group’s private equity real estate assets under management total INR 35 billion.