JLL India, the property consultancy firm, is planning to raise its second real-estate fund of Rs. 300 Crore, through it its investment wing JLL Segregated Funds Group. The fund is primarily being raised for residential projects around the top seven property havens in India, which include Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi-NCR, and will be raised in the domestic market. The fund will be raised over a period of five years under Alternative Investment Fund category II, and utilized for smaller residential project and high-yield mezzanine deal structures.

"Our strategy of investing in smaller projects with shorter tenure in prominent micro markets has worked well for the first fund. Clocking a return of 30%, we have partly exited from the first investment that was made through an earlier fund concluded in late 2013," said Mridul Upreti, CEO, JLL Segregated Funds Group, India. JLL SFG's maiden real-estate fund procurement was worth Rs. 161 Crore. It came under Residential Opportunities Fund - I, and was one of the first real estate funds to be registered with SEBI under the new Alternate Investment Funds (AIF) regulations. The new fund will also focus on smaller deals of Rs 25-30 crore and target annual returns of around 25%.

JLL's investment wing is closing in on investment in a residential project in Chennai, which is in line with one of their previous investments in line with a premium residential project of Bangalore-based Assetz Property Group in February 2014. "In residential property market, small is beautiful. Smaller investments in residential space ensure better control, monitoring of sales process, etc. On the contrary, scale is crucial in commercial segment deals," Mridul said.