“Our current assets under management in India are roughly about S$4 billion, and we hope to double that in five years. That’s something we hope the market will allow us to do, and given that next year will be our 30th year in India, I am hoping that this will give us an opportunity to leverage and offer the products that we believe have relevance in the market,” said Yap.
In India, the group has been diversifying its business portfolio across data centres, office spaces and logistics over the past two years. The company plans to double its portfolio in the next three-four years to 40-50 million square feet, of which 80% will be business parks.
Yap said the company will continue to grow across verticals and might enter a new segment if it gets the right opportunity.
The company is not seeing any impact of global economic challenges in India yet, he said.
“Just because there are some challenges in the sector doesn’t mean that every asset in the same sector will face challenges. It boils down to how we manage each of our investments. So we have to basically underwrite; we need to be very discerning in the way we make investments and make sure that we actually can add value to the investments that we are making,” he said.
Office space leasing is expected to go up despite the decision-makers taking more time to finalise a deal.“Although the return to the office is still on the way up, you can see it as far as market absorption, with many people signing up for leases. People do believe that as Covid slows down, employees will start to come back, and the truth is, people do need a space to build a culture of collaboration, to make sure that the workers can go back to discuss and basically leverage the collective power,” said Yap.
Currently, CapitaLand is in seven cities in India, and for IT parks and data centres, it will stay within those seven cities, the executive said. “For logistics, because you need to make sure you are providing customers with a distribution network, we may go broader than certain cities. And in India, we also have a relatively small lodging business, which is serviced residences. They are still relatively small in India, but hopefully over time, we can also complement them by growing within the parks that we have,” he said.
For CapitaLand, India is a growing market, even as Singapore will remain the largest market, he said.
“India is less than 5% of our portfolios, but as we grow in India, we are growing in the rest of the world too. I don’t think percentage terms necessarily need to change, but in absolute square footage and absolute dollars, we are hopeful and optimistic that it would improve,” said Yap.
