Blackstone buys Elante for undisclosed amount

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 27

Elante Mall, Chandigarh’s biggest shopping destination, has changed hands for the second time. Carnival Group has sold the property to global investment firm Blackstone Group for an undisclosed amount. Earlier, Carnival Group acquired the property from Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T) for a whopping Rs 1,785 crore in 2015.

The property includes retail space and office premises spread over 1.5 million sq ft and a luxury hotel, Hyatt. The average rental of the mall is around Rs 150 per sq ft. The rental depends upon the size, location and floor of the space available.

Nexus Malls, the fully owned subsidiary of Blackstone Group, will own and manage the property.

“Being the subsidiary of Blackstone Group and floated last year in India for managing the acquired malls by our parent company, we will manage Elante Mall with a focus on identifying, evaluating, buying and adding value to the asset,” Nishank Joshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Nexus Malls, told The Tribune.

Asked about the deal size, he refused to comment and said only the parent company (Blackstone Group) would be in a position to disclose. However, sources said the motive of the developer was to book profit; so Carnival must have booked profit by selling the mall to Blackstone Group and it could be over Rs 2,000 crore.

In India, Nexus Malls has a total of seven assets in its portfolio and owns and co-owns approximately 4.5 million sq ft of retail space. Its portfolio includes Ahmedabad One (Ahmedabad), Mall of Amritsar (Amritsar), Elante Mall (Chandigarh), Seawoods Grand Central Mall (Mumbai), Treasure Island Next (Indore, having 70 per cent stake), Treasure Island (Indore, having 50 per cent stake) and Westend Mall (Pune, having 50 per cent stake). Joshi said the monthly sales of all seven malls were around Rs 750-800 crore.

Joshi said it sought to implement the best practices and state-of-the-art technology in India by bringing in professional and broader mall management in the country. With the retail space boasting of international and domestic brands, food courts and a multiplex, Elante Mall attracts thousands of shoppers daily.

In May this year, Developer-operator of lifestyle shopping malls Virtuous Retail South Asia (VRSA) acquired the 2 million-sq ft North Country Mall in Kharar from Sun Apollo-Gumberg for Rs 700 crore.