ICICI Venture Funds Management Company has formed a joint venture with the US-based Tishman Speyer Properties (TSP) to focus on developing real estate projects in India. The details of the 50:50 joint venture will be finalised by the end of the month.TSP is a leading real estate owner, developer and operator, and has acquired or developed a portfolio of over 52 million square feet valued at over $15 billion. Some of the compnay's properties are New York City's Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center, London's Milbank and TowerPalace and Berlin's Sony Center.The joint venture is expected to pursue `ground-up' development of commercial, residential and retail properties across India.Renuka Ramnath, managing director and CEO of ICICI Venture, said: "ICICI Venture will deploy the capital for investments in the project through its $300 million real estate fund. Besides being a development company, TSP is also a fund manager, which has a proprietary fund as well through other third party funds. TSP will invest through these vehicles."The projects that have the approval for foreign direct investment (FDI) will be considered through this joint venture. The non-FDI projects will be pursued independently by ICICI Ventures through its new real estate fund.Katherine Farley, senior managing director of TSP, said: "India is clearly one of the most rapidly growing markets and a leading destination for FDI. We are evaluating a number of opportunities that are fairly large in size and scale."
