Piramal Finance targets affordable and mid-income housing sector

· Identifies initial pipeline of INR 3000cr across major metros; intends to scale up to US$2bn by 2020
· Dedicated team to focus on pure and preferred equity transactions
· Unique ability to facilitate financial closure for the project, as well as home finance for end users, at time of entry itself

Wednesday, 14th February 2018, Mumbai: Piramal Finance Limited (PFL), a subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises Limited, has set up a dedicated team to invest in affordable and mid-income residential projects across major metros in India. PFL has identified an initial pipeline of INR3000cr with transactions across the major metros under active consideration.

With the unique ability to participate across the entire capital stack, PFL will follow its trademark partnership approach for its investments in the affordable housing space.

PFL is able to provide both pure and preferred equity capital to top-grade developers that are looking to buy or develop land and need early-stage growth capital. PFL may also actively pursue an opportunistic acquisition of land on its own accord and invite developers to participate on a joint development basis.

At the same time, through its proprietary wholesale loan book PFL is able to sanction milestone linked construction finance for the project so that the developer is able to achieve financial closure for the project at the very outset. With the introduction of RERA, this is a unique advantage as it enables the developer to unilaterally focus on executing the project without worrying about financing.

Additionally, through PFL’s sales and research function Brickex, the developer is able to leverage a multi channel distributor and broker network to identify a marketing strategy and incentivize a community of partners that will further drive primary sales.

Finally, typical end users projects within this segment tend to be a mix of both salaried professionals and self employed individuals. Traditional home loan providers tend to focus on the salaried class which restricts the developer’s ability to generate interest from self employed end users for want of financing. Piramal Housing Finance is able to bridge this gap by funding individual home buyers (both salaried and self-employed) through a range of tailor made products focused on the affordable segment.

Khushru Jijina, Managing Director, Piramal Finance Limited and Piramal Housing Finance Limited, said “While many players in the market are focused on providing equity or debt capital towards affordable and mid income housing, we believe that our ability to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution – including both early stage equity as well as construction linked debt – is truly unparalleled as it helps the developer achieve financial closure for the project on Day Zero. Our ability to further drive sales through Brickex and fund those sales through customized home loan products specifically tailored towards salaried as well as self employed end users acts as unique competitive advantage. We now have a highly experienced team focused exclusively on scaling our presence within this segment and intend to scale up to US$2bn by 2020.”