India
The terrain, commanded.
India rewards preparation and punishes assumption more reliably than any major market. What follows is the terrain as we hold it: the capital position, the entry rules, title, the regulatory perimeter, and the state-by-state truth underneath all of them.
01 · The capital position
Reading
Domestic capital sets the pace now. That changes the job.
Domestic institutions now supply the majority of institutional flows into Indian real assets. They price faster, they are native to the approvals terrain, and they carry no currency exposure. Competing against that bid on cost of capital is a losing trade.
International capital's edge is discipline: structuring that survives diligence, governance a committee can defend, and execution control that does not dilute with distance. Our mandates exist to industrialise that edge.
02 · The entry architecture
Rules
Full ownership, automatic route. Five conditions decide everything after.
Construction development, meaning townships, housing and built-up infrastructure, carries one hundred per cent foreign investment with no approval committee in the way. The conditions attached are few, precise, and decisive. We hold them from memory.
- The route
Automatic, in full. A properly structured entry deploys without a government approval standing between the decision and the money.
- The lock-in
Three years, counted per tranche of investment, not from first close. A staged programme is a staircase of differently dated locks, and most first entries model it wrongly.
- The exit test
Exit follows completion of the project or development of trunk infrastructure: roads, water supply, street lighting, drainage and sewerage. Completion is determined under the municipality's own rules. The definition that unlocks repatriation is municipal, not contractual.
- The prohibition
Real estate business, dealing in land for profit, is closed to foreign investment, as is trading in development rights. The licensed routes through it: develop, or hold for rent. Rental income on lease sits expressly outside the prohibition.
- The phase rule
Each phase of a project is a separate project. Cut wisely, that unlocks staged exits. Cut carelessly, it strands capital in a phase that never meets the test.
We structure entries so the calendar of locks, the phase map and the exit test are decided on day one. Written down. Diarised. Evidenced when the day comes.
03 · Title
The ground truth
India registers transactions. It does not guarantee titles.
Registration records the deed, not the right, and every purchaser inherits the defects of the chain. Diligence here therefore runs thirty years deep, through revenue records that change name at every state line, through succession, mutation and possession. Paper title and undisturbed possession are separate questions, and we verify both.
An Indian title opinion is a qualified document. We read the qualifications the way a lender reads covenants: as the actual content.
04 · The approval stack
The sequence
Approvals are a programme, and the programme is the interest bill.
Indian consents arrive in a sequence with real dependencies: some serial, some parallel, several discretionary. In an Indian appraisal the sanction programme drives the financing cost, and the financing cost regularly outweighs the construction contingency. That makes the stack below a financial model, not an administrative list.
The stack, in the order it usually binds
- 01Land usetenure conversion and change of use, the discretionary root of the chain
- 02Layout sanctionthe sub-division and layout the later plans must obey
- 03Building plan and commencementthe sanctioned plan, and the certificate that lets work start against it
- 04Environmental clearanceprior, where thresholds trigger it; the stack's most litigated lineWatch
- 05Utilitiespower sanction and load, water sourcing, ground-water permission where drawn
- 06Fire and specialist consentsprovisional at design, final at completion; height and aviation clearances where relevant
- 07Occupation certificatethe statutory gate to lawful use, and the late-stage value leak
- 08Completion certificatethe closure the exit test reads
Single-window portals are real and partial: they compress some steps and leave the dependencies standing. We sequence what is serial, run what is parallel, and name what is discretionary, with an owner and an expected date against every line.
05 · The perimeter
Enforcement
The perimeter has hardened. Recently, and fast.
The delivery regulator's register in Maharashtra alone now carries more projects than the entire national register held four years ago. Escrowed collections, quarterly filings and public abeyance lists are the operating reality of Indian development, and the regulator publishes the compliance record of every counterparty you might sign with. We treat those registers as primary diligence, and our monitoring reads filings beside physical progress.
Environmental clearance has been the perimeter's most volatile line. Between May 2025 and July 2026 the Supreme Court struck down retrospective clearance, recalled that judgment, then re-decided the question on narrower ground: prior clearance is mandatory, and regularisation survives only as a closed, exceptional route. Assets bought on regularised clearances sit inside that turbulence. We know which ones, and we price them accordingly.
06 · The state, not the country
Dispersion
India is not a delivery-risk unit. The state is.
On the government's own monitor of central projects, aggregate cost overrun differs between states by a factor of nine. Public infrastructure is not private development, but the dispersion is the point. Approvals discipline, land records and enforcement quality are state variables, and site selection that ignores them imports a risk no contract can remove.
Our appraisals carry the state, not the flag. Conversion regimes, record quality, court backlogs and the live condition of the local approvals machinery are priced per site, because that is where they differ.
07 · A UK counterparty
Standards
A UK principal, holding UK standards abroad.
This practice runs from a UK company, and UK law follows it into every jurisdiction it works in. Bribery law here reaches conduct anywhere in the world and allows no exemption for facilitation payments. That is a stricter standard than most regimes ask, and we hold it without carve-outs: no payment, no exception, and documented diligence on every counterparty we instruct.
Professional cover, document control and a written conflicts position are disclosed at appointment, because a diligence questionnaire deserves answers rather than assurances.
Enquiries
The practice answers.
128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX
The development practice is led by Tanishq Chauhan. Correspondence reaches the principal directly.
Tanishq Chauhan on LinkedIn, opens in a new tab
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