Antares Legal advised SAMHI Hotels Ltd. on its strategic partnership with Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC, for an Upscale+ hotel investment platform in India with an equity investment plan of up to ~US$ 300 million.
The transaction team was led by Siddharth Bhavnani (Partner) and Surbhi Kothiala (Partner), with support from Divyanshu Bansal (Associate), Moksh Roy (Associate) and Priyanshi Aggarwal (Associate).
The partnership will be incubated with five of SAMHI’s hotels across Bengaluru and Pune, with more than 1,000 rooms, valued at ~₹2,200 crore, with GIC acquiring a significant minority stake in the underlying SPVs.
The investment will be used for capital expenditure, future acquisitions and to reduce leverage across hotels. SAMHI will manage all the operational and development assets in the platform.
With this investment, SAMHI will strengthen its balance sheet and grow its portfolio through its well tested ‘category conversion’ strategy.
SAMHI (Smart Hotel Investments) is a leading Indian hotel owner and asset manager operating under an institutional ownership model. It has partnerships with major international brands like Marriott, IHG, and Hyatt, and manages a portfolio of 32 operating hotels with approximately 4,948 keys across 14 cities in India, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune
Founded in 1981, GIC is Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, established to manage the country’s foreign reserves. It operates as one of Singapore’s three key reserve managers (alongside MAS and Temasek), employing a long-term investment strategy designed to preserve and enhance international purchasing power above inflation over a 20-year horizon .
With assets under management estimated at around US $800 billion as of May 2025, GIC invests across a broad range of asset classes—including public and private equities, fixed income, real estate, private equity, infrastructure, and inflation-linked bonds—in more than 40 countries from its Singapore headquarters and 10 global offices
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