CapitaLand’s Int’l Tech Park in Chennai brings Mitsubishi to India

Chennai: The real estate arm of Japanese major Mitsubishi is making its entry into commercial real estate development in India with a project in Chennai. Mitsubishi Estates is a key investor in Singapore-headquartered CapitaLand’s recent business park development fund CapitaLand India Growth Fund 2 (CIGF 2), a CapitaLand official told TOI.“Mitsubishi has contributed around 50% of the fund size (of S$400 million)...The seed project of the fund is the International Tech Park Chennai, at Radial Road (ITPC-Radial Road), and the phase two of the project is also likely be funded as part of CIGF2. There will be other IT parks in Pune and Bangalore too as part of this fund,” Sanjeev Dasgupta, CEO, CLI India, told TOI in an interaction. “CapitaLand has already made about S$750-S$800 mn of investments in Chennai, and we expect to invest over S$500 mn in the next four-five years across asset classes,” Dasgupta added.Headquartered in Singapore, CapitaLand Investment (erstwhile Ascendas), is present across seven cities in India- Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Goa. The company currently has over $4 billion in assets under management spanning business parks, industrial and logistics parks, and data centres. In Chennai, CapitaLand is present across all asset classes with the most recent being a data centre project in Ambattur. “The approval on the Chennai data centre in Ambattur is likely to come in this month, and construction will begin soon,” Dasgupta said. Chennai realty, in specific, is also gaining from an uptick in manufacturing projects, especially in electronics, the executive noted.CapitaLand India has around 11 million sq ft of business parks under development across six cities in India and around two million sq ft. of logistics space under development. The company is looking to double its portfolio from 28 million sq ft to close to 50 million sq ft in the next four to five years.