Billionaire investor Radhakishan Damani’s company Avenue Supermarts Limited has acquired a commercial building for Rs 71.5 crore in Mumbai’s Goregaon West area, documents accessed by real estate data and analytics firm Propstack show.
The building is part of the commercial Phase 1 of Vicino Building located on Link Road, Goregaon West and has been bought from Silver Moon Construction Private Limited, the documents showed.
The property was registered on July 29. The retailer paid the stamp duty for the property on March 31, 2021, taking advantage of the Maharashtra government’s stamp duty waiver.
On August 26, 2020, the Maharashtra government had announced a temporary reduction in stamp duty on housing units, from 5 percent to 2 percent, until December 31, 2020, to boost the stagnant real estate market, hit doubly hard by COVID-19. The stamp duty from January 1, 2021, until March 31, 2021, was 3 percent.
The property is spread across 34,147 sq ft, according to the documents.
This makes the per sq ft price to be around Rs 20,000 per sq ft.
A stamp duty of Rs 2.1 crore has been paid, according to the documents.
The company did not respond to a query Moneycontrol sent.
According to brokers in the area, the rentals are around Rs 85-95 per sq ft per month in Goregaon West and the Capital values generally hover around Rs 18,000 to Rs 20,000 per sqft on carpet.
“Dmart has been very active in taking advantage of lower stamp duty and pricing environment to acquire more retail properties,” said Sandeep Reddy, co-founder, Propstack.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has been on a property shopping binge. DMart, which operates in 11 states and 1 Union Territory, has bought properties in places such as Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Bengaluru. The retailer typically purchases properties instead of leasing them.
DMart has strategically focussed on enhancing its footprint during the past six to nine months due to the availability of better deals, according to real estate consultants Moneycontrol spoke to.
Prices are subdued, deals are available in better locations and closures are faster, which has helped retailers like DMart increase their footprint across geographies during the pandemic, they said.
Avenue Supermarts Ltd (ASL), which owns and operate DMart, bought a plot spread across 41,760 sq ft in Nizampet, Hyderabad worth Rs 34.3 crore in February 2021; in March, it bought 36,697 sq ft in Srinivagilu, Bengaluru worth Rs 30 crore; it acquired a plot for Rs 81 crore in Mumbai’s Bhandup area spread across 66,981 sq ft in May, the documents show.
In April this year, it acquired a land parcel spread across 8 acres from Mondelez India, formerly Cadbury India, for nearly Rs 250 crore.
Last year in July, the company acquired a property (where a building was proposed) in Narsingi, Hyderabad spread across 43,915 sq ft for Rs 38.4 crore. In December, it purchased a property at Tathawade in Pune spread across 48,989 sq ft for Rs 30.8 crore, the documents said.
Along with the Pune property, the company came into possession of 47 car parkings and 38 scooter parkings as well.
Avenue bought a commercial property in Mumbai’s Chembur—spread across 42,922 sq ft with 78 car parkings—for Rs 113 crore and another property in Mumbai’s Kalyan spread across 51,930 sq ft in December 2020 for Rs 39 crore, according to the documents.
D-Mart opened its first store in Mumbai, Maharashtra in 2002. As of March 31, 2021, the company had 234 operating stores spanning 8.82 million sq. ft.
DMart was in the news in April when in one of the biggest property deals in Mumbai, founder Damani and his brother Gopikishan Damani bought a Rs 1,001-crore independent house in Mumbai’s posh Malabar Hill area in April this year.
According to local brokers, the registration took place on March 31, the last day of the reduced 3 percent stamp duty on housing units in Maharashtra.
The Maharashtra government on March 31 said it would not extend the stamp duty waiver on property registrations and kept the Ready Reckoner Rates unchanged for the financial year 2021-22.
The company recently also bought retail space spread across 40,000 sq ft worth around Rs 100 crore from property developer Sunteck Realty.
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