ICICI Venture to raise upto Rs 1,000cr to invest in housing

Leading private equity firm ICICI Venture on Friday said it plans to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore from high net worth individuals in the next six-nine months to invest in the residential real estate.

"We are planning to raise Rs 750-1,000 crore in next six-nine months," ICICI Venture President (Real Estate) Sanjeev Dasgupta said.

He said the funds would be raised largely from high net worth individuals (HNIs) and would be deployed in the housing projects across major cities.

"We are looking to invest in mid-income housing segment in the top six cities of the country," Dasgupta said.

ICICI Venture is a leading private equity firms with funds under management in excess of USD 2 billion.

The company manages a dedicated real estate fund with a corpus of USD 550 million that was raised in 2005. It has invested in various realty projects in last few years, including Express Tower in Mumbai and IT SEZ in Hyderabad.

On the Reserve Bank's decision to hike repo and reverse repo rates by 25 basis points, Daspupta said this would lead to increase in interest rates on home loans and rise in cost of funds for construction financing.

Asked about the impact on the real estate sector, he said there could be a slowdown on housing demand but ruled out any rise in prices.