(Repeats story with no changes to text)
* Blackstone (NYSE:BX), Xander seek investments in shopping malls in
India
* Consumer spending in India set to top $3.6 trillion by
2020
* Ikea, H&M, Aeropostale and GAP to roll out more stores
By Aditi Shah
NEW DELHI, July 13 (Reuters) - E-commerce in India has been
booming and online giants like Amazon AMZN.O are spending big
bucks on the world's fastest growing major economy. Yet some
investors are pouring money into retail mainstays of a bygone
era - shopping malls.
Private equity investors like Blackstone BX.N and
Rothschild-backed Xander Group are looking for malls in India,
betting that people will flock to stores as more foreign brands
open and online retailers ease their aggressive discounting.
Indian malls, which are evolving from ramshackle collections
of stores to modern plazas complete with air conditioning and
family entertainment centres, are seen as a gateway to brands
that a growing middle class aspires to own.
The rise of the mall in India, at a time when many in the
United States are becoming debt-ridden white elephants, has been
helped by a flurry of new regulations that are encouraging
investors to take a fresh look at traditional retail.
They include easing foreign investment rules for
single-brand retailers, longer shopping hours and a new
framework for establishing real estate investment trusts
(REITs).
"Almost every retailer would like to be here, and as they
come they need quality space," said Siddharth Yog, chairman of
Xander, whose Virtuous Retail arm owns 5 million square feet of
operational and under-development malls in India.
Xander is looking to buy and build new malls in cities like
Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, said Yog, as the outlook for
physical retail stores brightens in India.
ONLINE RETAILERS UNDER PRESSURE
Investors had long shied away from shopping malls in India,
amid weak consumer spending and deep discounts by online
retailers like Amazon and local rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal.
Now online upstarts are under pressure from investors to
produce returns, and this, combined with government regulation
to ease online discounts, is reducing their advantage.
With consumer spending in India set to top $3.6 trillion by
2020, and brands like Ikea, H&M, Aeropostale and GAP planning
forays into a country where new rules allow shops to remain open
24 hours a day, private equity firms see strong potential.
"With the same mall space generating more footfalls and
revenues ... it'll definitely make organised retail properties
enticing for investors," said Anuj Puri, chairman and country
head at real estate consultant, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), India.
Puri expects mall valuations and yields from retail
properties to rise and attract investor interest, especially as
REITs offer them a clear exit path.
"There's definitely a revival in interest in shopping malls
and that's more to do with improved outlook for returns from
these investments on the back of a revival in economic growth,"
said a Mumbai-based industry banker.
The banker added that funds like Blackstone, Brookfield and
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) were looking at the
sector from a medium- to long-term return standpoint.
QUALITY SPACE SCARCE
A major challenge for retailers is the lack of high quality
malls to house incoming brands, partly because the economic
slowdown of 2011-2012 forced debt-laden developers to revise or
abandon projects.
Consulting firm A.T. Kearney estimates that India has just
one-tenth of the mall space of the U.S. market, despite having a
population four times larger.
For investors, the dearth of malls and growing demand from
retailers means faster rental growth and higher yields.
Retail rents in some malls have risen by as much as 20
percent over the past year, and shopping centre yields in India
are at about 11 percent compared with 4.9 percent in Singapore
and 4 percent in London, according to JLL.
This also means the race to buy assets could be frenetic,
with only about 20 percent, or 39 million square feet of
existing malls, being investment-worthy.
Thus far in 2016, investors have spent $397 million on just
two deals to buy malls in India, said JLL, compared with
negligible investment in recent years.
Blackstone, which has invested $2.7 billion in Indian real
estate, mainly office buildings, is now in advanced talks to buy
one million square feet of retail space from Larsen & Toubro
LART.NS in suburban Mumbai, two people familiar with the deal
said.
A Blackstone spokesman declined to comment.
The surge in investment could revive India's sluggish real
estate market and kick start projects, say developers.
"Money is fungible and developers can use it to invest in
other projects or reduce borrowing in existing ones," said
Sriram Khattar, head of Indian developer DLF Ltd's DLF.NS
rental business.