India's Biggest Landlord

Brick-By-Brick, How Blackstone Built A 125 Million Square Feet Realty Portfolio And An Enviable Pe Empire.

- Pavan Lall

Sitting With Tuhin Parikh in Blackstone Advisors India’s 5th floor office in the iconic Express Towers in Mumbai’s Nariman Point offers a peek into how the private equity (PE) giant thinks about real estate. Express Towers, designed in 1972 by renowned architect Joseph Allen Stein, is a Mumbai landmark that houses blue-chip companies such as McKinsey & Co., Indian Hotels Company, Merrill Lynch, EY, law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., among others.

Parikh, who is senior managing director and oversees the real estate business, says when Blackstone bought Express Towers in 2014 for $150 million, it was a mess. Tenants had installed their own box airconditioners—which leaked on walls and were aesthetically galling—as centralised air-conditioning was in a bad shape. Blackstone replaced the plant and gave customers the option to move to centralised air-conditioning or shift their air-conditioning units to one side of the building. It revamped the façade, added new sitting areas in the lobby, created security throughways from entrances and spruced up the elevator lobby. The older elevators would break down often and were replaced. Parikh brought new staff to manage the facility while retaining ground staff who knew the facility in and out.