TATA Realty and Tabreed forge strategic partnership with landmark M&A transaction in India

Tabreed and Tata Realty join forces in India’s first Cooling as a Service (CaaS) transaction. Tabreed will invest INR 100 Cr in Intellion Park to expand cooling infrastructure and offer district cooling services to commercial properties.

Tabreed, a prominent global cooling utility company, has entered into a significant strategic partnership with Tata Realty. This partnership represents Tabreed’s inaugural Cooling as a Service (CaaS) transaction in India, involving an investment of around INR 100 Crores in TATA Realty’s Intellion Park located in Gurugram. Tabreed will acquire the existing cooling infrastructure of Intellion Park and also undertake new expansions to enhance the cooling capacity. Through this collaboration, Tabreed will serve as the provider of cooling services to TATA Realty, offering District Cooling or CaaS concessions for commercial properties.

Moving away from the regular market practice wherein real estate developers own and operate their cooling assets through facility management arrangements, this partnership will enable Tabreed to acquire TATA Realty’s captive cooling infrastructure. This move will provide long-term, SLA-based cooling services with well-defined parameters to improve energy efficiency, asset longevity, system reliability and reduce life cycle costs of cooling for tenants.

Sanjay Dutt, MD & CEO of Tata Realty said, “Tata Realty has been at the forefront of promoting sustainable real estate development in India. With numerous achievements, including the country’s first net-zero certified commercial real estate campus, the company has set a high bar for the rest of the industry. In continuation of this trend, Tata Realty’s partnership with Tabreed to launch the Cooling as a Service (CaaS) market in India is expected to be a pivotal event, enabling the delivery of superior value to tenants and occupants, while promoting higher standards of ESG and wellness in commercial and mixed-use real estate developments. This collaboration follows the success of the green building rating system that transformed the Indian real estate sector a few decades ago.”

Khalid Abdullah al Marzooqi, Chairman of Tabreed Asia expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership stating, “The TATA stamp for our market entry into India re-iterates our shared long-term vision to deliver sustainable value for all stakeholders that most importantly includes the planet. Whilst we hope to see more large-scale adoption of district cooling in the country with individual real estate developers not having the need to invest, own or operate captive cooling assets which is inefficient compared to district cooling, this partnership with Tata Realty is the right step in this direction.”

The India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) announced by the Ozone Cell of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change forecasted eight-fold increase in aggregated cooling demand for the country by 2037-38, with 45% of the country’s peak energy demand likely to be for cooling by 2050. In addition, ICAP identifies the immediate need for skill development of the country’s HVAC sector with at least 100,000 technicians to be trained in good servicing practices and the new alternative refrigerants as the cooling demand increases.  

Sudheer Perla, Country Manager of Tabreed India, said, “Long-term, green financing delivered through innovative and bespoke business models such as CaaS will play a crucial role in scaling up the transition to a greener economy, especially for the built environment. Currently, developers are allocating huge sums of capital on HVAC systems for new buildings as well as highly-inefficient existing buildings to achieve their net zero goals, all whilst competing with and balancing other demands on their capex. Through demonstrating the value of CaaS at Intellion Park, we hope to pave the way for more rapid adoption of district cooling in India, easing the burden of upfront costs for developers to inspire more sustainable cooling solutions for the Indian real estate sector, which is set to witness fastest global increase in cooling-related energy demand in the coming decades.”