IndiaRetailBiz

Vornado Realty Trust, a US-based office and retail developer, has joined hands with India’s largest private secotor company Reliance Industries, to buy, build and operate shopping centres across India. Together they have decided to invest $250 million each in equal joint venture that will create shopping centres measuring between 500,000 to one million sqft each.

While, Vornado which owns a one-third stake in the Toys “R” Us chain as wll more than 100 million sqft of office, retail and merchandise-mart space, Reliance is India’s largest business conglomerate owning one of the country’s fastest growing retail outfit in the form of a wholly owned subsidiary called Reliance Retail. Reliance Retail operates over 700 stores across 14 operating formats ranging from hypermarkets to convenience and speciality stores.

Most of the shopping proerties to be created by the joint venture partners will house Reliance’s hypermarket format ‘Reliance Mart’ as its anchor tenant.

The construction of retail space in the country has picked up momentum to cater to the burgeoning demand for retail space across the large cities. According to Cushman & Wakefield, a global real-estate consultancy, around 17 million sqft of mall space is expected to become available this year in eight major cities.

Michael Fascitelli, President, Vornado in June last year had said that his company was looking at entering India’s retail market at some point.