Yatra Capital invests euro 8.79 mn in two firms

Yatra Capital (Yatra), a private equity player with focus on the Indian real estate, today announced investments in two companies in the retail and hospitality sectors.

One of them is a ¤3.91 million (around Rs 22.8 crore) investment for a 28 per cent holding in Gangetic Developers, a joint venture formed to develop a retail mall in Agra, Uttar Pradesh.

The other company that Yatra invested in was Alliance Hospitality Services to develop premium star category hotel and services apartments in Pune, Maharashtra. Yatra would invest ¤4.88 million (around Rs 28.5 crore) in the company for an equity holding of 20 per cent.

With these investments, Yatra has now committed ¤80.5 million (around Rs 470.9 crore) of the initial ¤100 million (Rs 585 crore) it raised in December 2006.

The PE player has identified hospitality and retail as the next growth areas. The hospitality sector in India is forecasted to grow at 8.8 per cent every year over the next 10 years, and it is anticipated that 1 lakh rooms will be required in the next 5-7 years with average room rates rising by 20-25 per cent in 2-3 years.

Currently, organised retail represents only about 4 per cent of the total market.

However, this segment is expected to grow to more than $100 billion from $8-10 billion in the next few years, with an annual growth rate of more than 34 per cent, thereby requiring over 500 million sq ft of planned retail space (as per the estimates of ICICI Property Services and KSA Technopak).