Piramal Finance targets affordable and mid-income housing sector

Piramal Finance Limited (PFL), a subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises Limited, has set up a dedicated team to invest in affordable and mid-income residential projects across major metros in India. PFL has identified an initial pipeline of Rs 3000cr with transactions across the major metros under active consideration. With the unique ability to participate across the entire capital stack, PFL will follow its trademark partnership approach for its investments in the affordable housing space. Khushru Jijina, Managing Director, Piramal Finance Limited and Piramal Housing Finance Limited, said “While many players in the market are focused on providing equity or debt capital towards affordable and mid-income housing, we believe that our ability to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution, including both early stage equity as well as construction linked debt, is truly unparalleled as it helps the developer achieve financial closure for the project on Day Zero. Our ability to further drive sales through Brickex and fund those sales through customised home loan products specifically tailored towards salaried as well as self employed end users acts as unique competitive advantage. We now have a highly experienced team focused exclusively on scaling our presence within this segment and intend to scale up to US$2bn by 2020.”

Student housing start-up gets $2m investment

Placio, a Noida-based student housing start-up, has raised pre-series 'A' funding from Prestellar Ventures, a Singapore-based private equity fund for $2 million to provide superior student living experience in India and South-East Asia. With this, Placio will leverage the network and experience of the fund in redefining student hostel hospitality sector by increasing the existing capacity 20 times this year. With this fund, Placio plans to utlize in acquiring additional beds in order to provide a seamless technology platform to students with features such as hostel management system, roommate matching and search, value added services like food ordering, booking of events, CRM system and others via in-house mobile wallet. The total number of beds in campus housing and private hostels currently available in India is close to 6.1 million. There is an immense untapped market with 50 million students studying in colleges and universities and 60-65% students studying outside their home town. With the funding now in place from Prestellar Ventures, Placio intends to capitalise on this large potential market. — TNS