Prior to winding up of the Indian arm, Starwood Capital India Advisors, downsized its staff strength over the last few months, sources in the know said. Sundaram Rajagopal, managing director, India and south East Asia at Starwood Capital Group, has already joined investment management firm Ada Investments as senior partner and chief executive officer of Ada Real Estate.
A mail sent to Starwood Capital Group did not elicit any response.
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“They have not been able to raise any new funds for India or deploy anything. They are just managing a couple of investments in India,” said a managing director of private equity fund who did not want to be quoted.
One of the Starwood’s marquee investments is First International Financial Centre, a commercial office complex in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) co-developed by Starwood; India Property Fund, co-sponsored by The Chatterjee Group and Vornado Realty Trust and Urban Infrastructure Real Estate Fund.
Starwood Capital has also invested in Sriram Properties, the Chennai-based real estate company and part of Shriram Group. Starwood exited Sriram’s realty project in Uttarpara near Kolkata before picking up stake in the the realty company.
Realty consultants point out that Starwood has become the latest global PE firm which has exited India. After the global financial slowdown, a number of investors such as Lehman Brothers, RREF among others exited India.
Some others such as BoA Merril Lynch had sold its Asian real estate business, including that of Indian assets to Blackstone group. Another US-investor Citigroup Inc sold its Asian reallty investment platform to Apollo Global Management and AIG sold Asian fund business to Invesco in 2010.
"Not many global fund managers made money in Indian real estate. Others such as Blackstone waited for the right opportunity before investing in Indian real estate," the executive quoted earlier said.