JM Financial Group has planned to bankroll real estate projects through the alternative investment fund (AIF) route and syndications, said non-executive vice chairman Vishal Kampani said, in the latest investors call held on May 27, 2024.

A lot of AIFs and a lot of private capital are being able to do the land finance and the approval finance. Real estate developers have realized that when they are taking early-stage financing, it is just easier to do that from an AIF platform than doing it from an NBFC platform.

"...we will have a strategic AIF in the group specifically for land financing and approval financing where we have a ton of client relationships, and we will be able to use those relationships to give them money from an AIF vehicle perspective. So, that is sort of the strategic shift from the real estate book," Kampani said in the call.

The top JM Financial boss said the firm will leverage light on the ARC. "We will use our balance sheet to acquire only opportunistic retail MSME assets, which portfolios have done very well. And most of our turnarounds and strategic sort of initiatives with partners for distressed assets will morph into an AIF platform," he added.

The planned AIF will be a hybrid kind where the vehicle will take 80% exposure in credit and 20% exposure in good, fastgrowing sort of NBFCs in specialist areas, Kampani added.

You can access the transcript of the concall here.