Propertyshare to cross Rs 500 crore

Fractional property ownership platform Propertyshare on Tuesday announced that it aims to cross Rs. 500 crore in Assets Under Management (AUM) this year. The platform aims to become India's largest and alternative investment platform, with its presence in every Tier I city in India within two years. Propertyshare is eyeing expansion into multiple geographies, countries and asset classes including commercial, residential, retail, industrial (warehousing) and hospitality. In recent times, commercial real estate has been gaining ground with the advent of online platforms as they offer better investment options with monthly and aggregated returns on rent-generating properties in commercial hubs. Moreover, in the last 15 years, approximately 500 million square feet of Grade A offices has been developed and occupied by domestic and international tenants mostly in the tech hubs of Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon and Hyderabad. Monetizing these assets has become easier as the government watered down foreign investment parameters in the sector allowing international real estate funds, sovereign wealth funds and pension funds to participate in income generating real estate. In the absence of a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), the retail investor on the ground however, has largely been left out of this product leaving him with a two-dimensional investment option of a fixed interest bearing and fully taxed fixed deposit and a volatile stock market. "There is no product that provides seven to eight percent current yield and an equity upside on capital appreciation. Tenanted office provides the returns but are inaccessible to the retail investor thanks to large ticket sizes of 10-50 crores, lack of liquidity and the inability to quantitatively analyse commercial lease structures. We are solving all that in Propertyshare," said co-founder and CEO, PropertyShare, Kunal Moktan. One of the most interesting patterns seen in investment on the platform is in the proportional growth in the number of NRI investors. In its initial year, the platform's NRI investors comprised a mere three percent against 97 percent native investors; since then, the platform has seen a 13x increase in the share of investment from NRI investors, reaching 39 percent of the total investment in 2017.