The alternate assets business manager of the Kotak Mahindra Group, Kotak Investment Advisors announced that it has secured an anchor investment of $500 million (over Rs 4,068 crore) from a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). This is for its 13th Real Estate (RE) Fund, a $1 billion platform aimed at opportunistic real estate investments in India.

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It was announced in June this year that Kotak Investment Advisors had entered into an agreement with an ADIA entity to set up a $590 million over (Rs 4,800 crore) real estate investment platform.

It will invest in office assets across India, focusing on the top six property markets of Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

“This is an opportunistic fund which can invest across real estate asset classes and capital stack i.e. both debt and equity. The Fund will primarily target investments in residential real estate. With the first close of this fund, Kotak Investment Advisors has raised around $1.5 billion in real estate across multiple strategies in around one and a half years,” said Vikas Chimakurthy, CEO, Kotak Realty Fund.

With this new fund, KIAL now has more than 3.3 billion USD raised, managed, or advised under its real estate fund series. The fund is domiciled in Gujarat’s GIFT City.

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“As an India focused alternate asset manager, Kotak has played a key role in attracting global capital to various alternate asset investment strategies in India. Kotak’s Real Estate Investment practice has been a consistent performer over 17 years across cycles and strategies,” Srini Sriniwasan, MD, Kotak Investment Advisors.

He believes that this track record has allowed Kotak Investment Advisors to establish itself as a major domestic alternative asset manager with a sizable worldwide limited partner base that has repeatedly reposed faith in Kotak by taking a sizable stake in successor funds.

“This agreement extends our existing and longstanding relationship with Kotak. The new platform is primarily targeted at the significant demand for housing in India, which is driven by sustained economic growth and a shortage of urban housing clusters,” said Mohamed AlQubaisi, Executive Director of the Real Estate Department at ADIA.

With regard to Indian real estate assets, this is ADIA's fifth partnership with Kotak Investment Advisors. Separately, a distressed fund backed by India's largest domestic alternative assets investment major received a $500 million commitment from the UAE-based sovereign wealth fund.

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Kotak Investment Advisors was founded in 2005 and is a division of Kotak's alternate assets practise. To date, it has raised, managed, and advised on a total of $6.8 billion in various asset classes, including real estate, private equity, infrastructure, special situations funds, and investment advisory.

In August, Murtuza Arsiwalla, director, Kotak Institutional Equities, had told CNBC-TV18 that 2022 has been a good year for India's residential real estate market despite the emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and according to this party is not over yet.

“Whether it's the price increase, which is driving the demand, or the demand, which is driving the price increase... Whichever way, the party seems to continue as far as residential real estate goes so far,” Arsiwalla said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.