ICICI Venture to float $2 bn real estate fund

ICICI Venture Funds Management Ltd is floating a $2 billion real estate fund "" the largest in the country.

The fund, which will be launched next month, will have a tenure of ten years and the money will be invested in projects within three years.

The fund from the country's largest private equity fund (it manages assets of over $2.5 billion in a diversified portfolio) comes just 18 months after it launched a real estate fund of $500 million. Of this, it has already invested 70 per cent in various projects.

ICICI Venture joins other majors such as Morgan Stanely, Citigroup, HDFC, J P Morgan, and Kishore Biyani that hope to cash in on the realty boom by floating real estate funds.

The private equity fund is planning to operate in the entire value chain of the real estate business and will now use part of the cash from the fund to build a land bank. It has also decided to buy and manage completed properties "" commercial and residential "" and sell them later.

Confirming the development, Renuka Ramnath, managing director and CEO of ICICI Venture Funds, said: "We will be able to raise large sums of money leveraging the ICICI brand name, coupled with over five years of experience in realty investment and, of course, a great international real estate developer as partner."

ICICI Venture has a 50-50 joint venture with Tishman Speyer, TSI Ventures, to develop new projects with other partners. The fund has also tied up with developers to finance and build new properties in India.

For instance, TSI Ventures, in association with Nagarjuna Constructions Company Private Ltd, has won a bid to develop an integrated township at Tellapur, Hyderabad on a 400-acre plot.