India Sotheby’s International Realty enters commercial space

“Randev joins us with a clear purpose of creating a strong revenue generating CRE vertical. His relationships with developers will also help broaden the residential sales practice of India SIR,” Goyal said.

Global luxury real estate brand India Sotheby’s International Realty (SIR) has entered the domestic commercial real estate (CRE) space as it expects the segment to perform well fuelled by the expansion of India’s IT-ITeS sector, especially with digital services becoming a core requirement for businesses in the last few years.

“India’s transition from a low-cost IT service provider, to a high-end research and innovation centre has been remarkable. It has made the office and commercial sector in the country quite resilient. Couple this with improving infrastructure, quality Grade-A office space and digital connectivity, and we see this as a great opportunity. Our foray into commercial completes our full-suit service offering in India’s real estate,” India SIR CEO Amit Goyal told FE.

ICRA co-group head Mathew K Eranat said in a report last week, “Despite challenges, long-term demand prospects appear favourable for the [CRE] sector considering that broad occupier base in such assets has not witnessed any material business impact due to Covid. Moreover, India remains a very cost-competitive destination for setting up global delivery centres for large MNCs, which have traditionally driven a lot of demand in the sector.”

India SIR has also hired industry veteran Gagan Randev as executive director to head CRE. He will spearhead the company’s efforts to be a force in the real estate capital markets business, focusing on asset sales across different asset classes, land, funding, and cross-border initiatives.

“Randev joins us with a clear purpose of creating a strong revenue generating CRE vertical. His relationships with developers will also help broaden the residential sales practice of India SIR,” Goyal said.

Randev brings over 25 years of experience across real estate and financial services. In real estate, he has been involved in structuring of complex investor exits, sale of marquee assets, along with land sales and fund raising.

He joins India SIR from Colliers International, where he was national director (capital markets) looking after asset sales (commercial, retail and hospitality), land sales (including joint ventures and joint developments, development management agreements) and fund raising (equity/ debt/ mezzanine). In the past, he has worked with BPTP, Religare Securities, ABN Amro Bank, Citibank and ANZ Grindlays Bank. He was also a key member of the founding team at Tata AIA Life Insurance.

SIR is present in 75 countries and territories with 1,000 offices and 24,000 sales associates and has achieved a real estate global sales volume of $150 billion in 2020.