Piramal prowls for distressed real estate assets

Investor confidence was rocked last year by a series of defaults at shadow lender IL&FS Group, which pushed up costs for borrowers, including builders looking to roll over debt

Billionaire Ajay Piramal’s son is seeking to take advantage of teetering Indian developers to expand his property business.

Piramal Realty, which counts Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Warburg Pincus & Co. as minority investors, is looking to buy land from distressed developers and build a portfolio of commercial assets, Anand Piramal, the group’s executive director, said in an interview in Mumbai.

“In the next two years there will be lot of consolidation, and in each city the top four to five developers will survive and thrive,” the 34-year-old said. “Five or six years ago, most of the people that came