INSIDE BLACKSTONE'S INDUSTRIAL REALTY PLAY

After office parks and malls, the global asset manager is fast building its logistics and warehousing portfolio

- Madhurima Nandy

Of late, one corner of Chakan, an automobile and manufacturing hub, has been seeing a burst of construction activity. On crossing the factories and manufacturing plants of some of the world's largest automakers, including Mercedes, Volkswagen and Mahindra & Mahindra, the New MIDC Road leads to a 100-acre site. There, on the outskirts of Pune, Chakan V, a sprawling mega logistics park covering 2.6 million sq.ft, is coming up. While the size of the industrial facility is impressive in itself, the project has another unusual feature in the involvement of Blackstone, the world's biggest real estate investor.

Renowned the world over for its acquisition skills, the New York-headquartered global asset manager's many suc cesses in India's office and retail real estate sectors over the years have mostly taken the inorganic path. The logistics.

park in Chakan, however, is an instance of Blackstone building something from the ground up. Horizon Industrial Parks, the Blackstone entity handling logistics and warehousing projects, recently delivered another 52-acre park, 'Chakan II'. More such projects are underway in Bengaluru and Chennai.

Since Blackstone opened its real estate division in India in 2007, its focus has entirely been on the office and mall segments. A little over a decade and a half later, a steady stream of acquisitions has left it with the largest office space portfolio, and second-largest shopping mall portfolio in the country today. Those acquisitions have helped make India its third biggest investment market after the US and the UK.