The Hindu Business Line : Jewish NRI marshals Israeli interest in Indian realty

Recently in Tel Aviv The Marshall group of companies plans to scale up exposure in Indian realty market, which is gaining traction in the wake of gradual policy liberalisation.

Mr Samuel J. Marshall, Group Chairman of the Singapore-based Countercorp International Pvt Ltd and a Jewish NRI, told Business Line on the sidelines of the India-Israel Joint Business Forum in Tel Aviv early this month: “We have established close to $800 million worth of real estate business in India for Israeli investors, involving acquisition of land, township, development of malls, commercial buildings and IT parks. This will go up to $1.2 billion in the coming months.”

He said with India’s economic growth running close to 9 per cent and with the advantage of being an NRI: “We zeroed in on the real estate arena and set up two offices in Mumbai and Delhi, and our officials there are filtering and checking land title and doing 80 per cent of the requirement in order to bring Israeli and our investors into India”.

He said his company invited proposals that were FDI-compliant in the range of $20 million to $500 million for outright purchase and acquisition of lands as well as joint venture proposals either with the landowners or with local developers. Mr Marshall said the long-term objective was to develop “realty venture funds with local and global investors”.

Recalling his entry into India in the 1920s with his schooling and college education in Mumbai, he said Marshalls were house-brokers to Hindustan Lever India in the oil and oilseeds sector. Subsequently, they expanded to London, focussing on the soya complex, particularly edible oils, and his flagship firm Marpro emerged as leading edible oil brokers for over two decades with offices in Brazil, Argentina, US, Hamburg, Malaysia, Singapore.

The motive for diversification into different destinations and portfolios was based on the premise that “to succeed you have to be in the point of origin and the point of consumption”, Mr Marshall said.

He pointed to the general affinity between India and Israel dating back to the time of the First Temple when the first Jewish communities settled in India. Given the geopolitical developments in the intervening centuries, a pragmatic assessment based on current realities was in order, he said, adding that finding partners for realty business “is a matter of selecting right partners and we organise road shows to identify them and facilitate confidence-building between the two countries in real estate with a proper understanding of Indian conditions and Israeli needs”.

He said Israel was now switching focus slightly from former East Bloc countries to India, and India should take advantage of this.

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