Seoul-headquartered financial services company Mirae Assets Global Investments has launched a real estate investment platform to invest in core assets in India.
Mirae is the only Korean asset management company at present that is pursuing a real estate investment strategy in India, according to Ashwini Kumar Mathur, who heads the newly-created platform.
The firm is understood to have started evaluating investments in India since the start of this year. After setting up an office in Mumbai, the firm appointed Kumar to lead its operations back in July. Kumar was previously the assistant vice president for capital markets at the property services firm Cushman and Wakefield.
“We decided to enlarge our exposure to emerging countries and among those India is the place we wanted to invest in, given its growth story.”
– Jun Young Hong
Mirae has set a $500 million target investment allocation for India, which would be deployed in income-producing commercial assets such as offices and IT parks in targeted cities. The focus would be on investing in Mumbai, Bangalore and the National Capital Region (NCR). Additionally the firm would also consider cities like Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.
Mirae is currently deploying its own proprietary capital on a deal-by-deal basis and Kumar told PERE that the firm does not intend to use local partners to aide its investing.
The South Korean firm has operated a mutual funds business in India since 2007 but the platform marks its maiden push into alternative assets investing in the country.
“Portfolio wise, we have mainly invested in developed markets across the US, Australia and Europe. Now we decided to enlarge our exposure to emerging countries and among those India is the place we wanted to invest in, given its growth story,” commented Jun Young Hong, head-businesses for Mirae Asset Global Investments (India) on the rationale for this move.
Mirae has $6 billion of equity invested directly in a portfolio of core assets in global markets. Within Asia, the firm has made real estate investments in China and Australia, aside from its home market Seoul. According to a report in The Korea Economic Daily, the firm is also considering raising around KRW 500 billion ($440 million; €372 million) for a global real estate fund.
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