Janaadhar (India) Pvt. ltd, one of India’s few pure-play Affordable Housing companies, announced the closing of Rs 54 crore round of capital raise. The round was led by Treeline Asia Master Fund (Singapore), a leading hedge fund based out of Hong Kong and Singapore. Narayan Ramachandran, ex-Country Head of Morgan Stanley India, Vallabh Bhansali, veteran market expert, and Vikram Gandhi, a globally respected investment banker who recently returned to India to work on social impact initiatives, also invested in this round.
Janaadhar is among the earliest and one of only a handful of pure-play affordable housing companies focused exclusively on the lower end of the India’s housing market – typically known as Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and Lower Income Group (LIG) sections. Importantly, it is the only Affordable Housing company in India that has a unique structure as a Social Business, with the entire promoter stake being held in a Not-For-Profit Section 25 Company, Jana Urban Foundation. It is founded by Ramesh Ramanathan, a social entrepreneur, and co-founder of Jana Group of institutions.
India’s affordable housing space is one that is receiving increasing attention from policy makers and governments, an acknowledgement of the significant size of the housing challenge, and the need to catalyse credible private-sector affordable housing projects.
Speaking on this transaction, Raghunath Srinivasan, Executive Director of Janaadhar said, “We are very happy to have closed this round of funding – it’s a validation of our approach to addressing issues of affordable housing in a unique social business model, and we are especially delighted have such a distinguished group of investors to come on board. We look forward to executing on our ambitious plans and expand our affordable housing footprint across multiple cities in the coming 2-3 years, within the rigorous institutional structure of a social business – doing justice to both aspects of the term.”
Zaheer Sitabkhan, Director at Treeline added, "Tree Line is very happy to be associated with Janaadhar, which seeks to institutionalize an unorganized sector and bring benefits to all involved"
Narayan Ramachandran said, “I am delighted to be associated with Janaadhar which I am certain will play an important role in the area of affordable housing, which is a national priority. The need of the hour is to provide large scale, high quality housing at low cost to the underserved”.
Vallabh Bhansali spoke of his investment in the transaction, “My investment in Janaadhar is a testimony to the fact that I consider Affordable Housing for low income groups as vital to the development of the country. I am happy to be involved with Janaadhar and I am sure that it would grow to be one of the premium affordable housing companies in the country”.
Vikram Gandhi, Founder Asha Impact, and one of the key investors in Janaadhar said, “We look forward to working with a highly successful and respected social entrepreneur such as Ramesh Ramanathan and his team at Janaadhar to help the company scale up and become a leading developer of low cost housing on a pan India basis, as well as actively engaging with the Central and State authorities to help achieve the government's mission of housing for every citizen by 2022."
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