Walton Street BlackSoil invests Rs 110 crore in Hyderabad & Chennai housing projects

Walton Street BlackSoil Real Estate Debt Fund II (WSBREDF-II), has invested Rs 110 crores in two mid income housing projects in Hyderabad and Chennai being developed by Krishnaiah Projects Pvt Ltd , part of the Bollineni group and Jain Housing and Construction.

Project Zion, being developed by Krishnaiah Projects Pvt Ltd, is located in Chennai and is part of the last phase of an established township comprising 600 units, while Project Salzburg by Jain Housing and Construction has a total 425 units. Both these projects are expected to be completed by 2025 and 2022.

“The mid-income housing segment has shown great promise. In the last one year, the segment has gained prominence and has led the share of new launches. We are delighted to provide financing to these two key housing projects and shall continue to invest WSBREDF-II commitments with developers of similar pedigree,” said Vimal Jangla, Managing Partner at Walton Street India.

The deal is closely following on from the first closure of this second fund at Rs 360 crores with a target corpus of Rs 500 crore and is in line with the plan of WSBREDF-II to pursue residential structured debt investments in projects across India with developers that focus on execution and delivery.

Apart from these two transactions, the WSBREDF-II fund will target 6-8 more investments in tier-1 cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and the NCR. These financings are expected to provide debt capital support to developers and make consistent cash flow available to them to facilitate the timely completion of existing projects.

“The focus of our second fund is to provide financing to developers with proven track records of execution across the mid-income housing sector in our key markets driven by end-user demand, to invest in key in-fill projects with full control over cash flow and visibility on financial closure and completion,”said Jangla.

In Q2 2021, more than half of the new housing projects launched across India were in the affordable and mid-income residential segment.

The recent relaxations in the lockdowns and other factors such as higher absorption than supply, improved affordability, and favorable government policies across prominent housing markets in the country. The cities like Hyderabad and Chennai has seen a gradual pickup in sales volume. Since 2013, and prior to the launch of WSBREDF-II, Walton Street India and BlackSoil have jointly invested over Rs 1,500 crores of debt capital across more than 50 real estate transactions. Recently, BlackSoil and the former India-based management team of Walton

Street Capital, L.L.C. bought Walton Street India’s real estate debt business. The India management team is led by Kaushik Desai, Vinit Prabhugaonkar and Vimal Jangla.