WSB Real Estate Partners, Blacksoil raise Rs 500 cr debt fund; to deploy in housing projects

New Delhi: WSB Real Estate Partners (formerly Walton Street India) and Blacksoil group on Thursday announced raising Rs 500 crore so far in a debt fund to be deployed in the housing sector.

In a statement, WSB Real Estate Partners said it has "achieved the target Fund size of Rs 500 crore and stepped into the green-shoe option for their latest Fund, WSBREDF II." The fund will focus on using structured debt to invest in residential real estate projects serving the mid-income/affordable housing segment across select tier-I cities and will look to partner with developers with a good track of execution and delivery.

The fund raise saw active participation from all stakeholders, including large family offices, corporates, offshore investors, and HNIs.

The group also announced its rebranding from Walton Street India to WSB Real Estate Partners.

Kaushik Desai, Managing Partner of WSB Real Estate Partners said, “WSBREDF II has successfully crossed its target of INR 500 crore and stepped into green-shoe within just a year of launch. With a healthy deal flow pipeline and promising underlying RE fundamentals, we are optimistic of fully deploying the capital in the next 2-3 quarters." WSB is an alternate Investment platform, jointly held by ex-India Management team of Walton Street (Kaushik Desai, Vinit Prabhugaonkar, and Vimal Jangla) and the Blacksoil group, has been investing in the Indian real Estate space since 2008-09.

WSB and its affiliates have managed or committed more than Rs 1750 crore of debt capital in residential real estate. Spread over 5 metros and across about 40 transactions, the group has already secured 27 complete and 5 partial exits from this investment corpus.