Actis to infuse over $700 mn to develop life sciences assets

A global investor in sustainable infrastructure, Actis is planning to infuse over $700 million to build and develop assets under its platform focused on providing real estate to tenants in the life sciences and related sectors in the country.

Actis is looking to expand its life sciences realty portfolio via its recent acquisition of Rx Propellant and is also looking at inorganic growth via a few more buyouts.

Partner and Head of India and SE Asia Real Estate at Actis, Ashish Singh, told the media that the life sciences sector of India holds huge potential for growth in the current decade, with a large talent pool at competitive cost making it a convincing destination for global research & development (R&D) and manufacturing.

The platform, which leases realty to research & development (R&D) labs and associated facilities of these firms will be developed to over 6 million sq ft from the current 1 million sq ft over the following five years. The company is looking to expand further in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore where it already has an existence, and will also add properties in Ahmedabad and Pune.

The firm is planning to grow our operations in the life sciences sector via a buy and build program targeting both greenfield and brownfield assets with a focus on sustainability, Singh said.

He believes India is an evident beneficiary of the manufacturing and supply chains realignment as part of de-risking from China when it comes to the life sciences segment. Patents that currently account for the global market worth about $250 billion, are expiring between 2021 and 2026, and India is placed as a key beneficiary of this unlocking of the market.

India has been attracting a lot of global R&D work in the life sciences industry in the backdrop of an abundant high-quality talent pool and cost savings of around 65% to global corporations.

More outsourcing of this work is likely to push demand for the life sciences-related realty sector while no organised supply of real estate is available for these corporations in India presently as most of it stays fragmented.

Rx Propellant is looking to be a market-leading life science-focused realty developer-operator in India with its long-term partnerships in the Indian contract research organisations ecosystem.

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