ESR Group Ltd and GIC on Thursday announced an 80:20 strategic partnership for a $600 million joint venture to acquire core industrial and logistics assets in India.

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The joint venture is an extension of the two companies' existing partnership in India, which was initiated in 2020. The initial capital pool was dedicated to investing in development and value-add logistics and industrial opportunities across India, the companies said in a statement.

The new joint venture will provide capital that is dedicated to enabling the platform's inorganic growth and will invest in stablised operational assets across tier 1 and tier 2 cities.

"With an upsurge in the share of organised retail and e-commerce, supported by emerging sectors such as electric vehicles and semiconductors, the industrial and logistics asset class is expected to outperform other real estate and infrastructure asset classes in the medium term," the statement said.

Jeffrey Shen and Stuart Gibson, ESR Co-founders and Co-CEOs, in a statement, said that capital partner support has been key to the growth of ESR's new economy real estate platform. "We are excited to work with GIC to capitalise on the strong growth in the logistics sector in India," they said.

Meanwhile, Abhijit Malkani, the CEO of ESR India, said that the country is at the cusp of a supply chain transformation supported by automation, digitisation, and favourable government policies. "Class-A industrial and logistics developments offer a variety of features to enable increased operational efficiency, which is vital to this shift. With the Core JV platform, we will upgrade the assets as required, and add sustainability elements, to ensure that we offer the same product quality to our customers as we do for products that we develop ourselves,” he said.

ESR India Ltd is a part of the ESR Group and is a developer and manager of industrial and logistics real estate.

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