2,926 total views, 4 views today
Live Mint: Realty veterans plan
Bengaluru: Real estate veterans Anuj Puri and Yash Gupta along with CapitalM, the family office of realty developer RMZ Corp, plan to launch a $100 million early-stage fund to invest in companies in the expanding property technology (proptech) segment.
Gupta, Puri and CapitalM have co-founded Bluesky Ventures (BSV), in which they are also general partners and sponsors. Bluesky plans to raise capital through the alternative investment fund route.
A partnership between real estate professionals-turned-entrepreneurs and a sectoral company is relatively unique. It comes at a time when the domestic real estate industry is undergoing a churn amid an extended slowdown and experts calling for an overhaul of the sector.
Both Puri and Gupta will invest in the proposed fund in their personal capacity.
Abhishek Goenka, CEO of RMZ family office, said the fund aims to raise the first tranche of capital by the end of this year, mainly through investments from the sponsors. It would reach out to external investors to raise the rest of the capital over 12 to 18 months, he added.
“While there have been a lot of investments in the financial and educational technology, funding in proptech has been fairly untouched but has a lot of opportunities across a project lifecycle,” said Goenka, who was a senior partner at PWC before joining RMZ this year.
CapitalM is an investor in disruptive real estate technologies and provides Series A to Series C funding to entrepreneurs who have an established product and user base but need growth capital to scale their business.