An affiliate of global private equity firm Warburg Pincus Llc and Mumbai-based developer Runwal Group have formed a joint venture (JV) to create a shopping mall platform. Both partners will commit $200 million each in the form of equity and raise another $600 million in debt to create a corpus of $1 billion to invest in and develop shopping malls across tier 1, 2, and 3 cities in India, which have a sizeable population and growing disposable income. The platform will look to build large, destination malls, as well as smaller hypermarket and cinema-anchored community malls. This is Warburg Pincus’s first investment in the retail development sector in India, after putting 1,800 crore in Piramal Realty for the latter’s residential business and $250 million in Embassy Industrial Parks Pvt. Ltd. The Warburg Pincus affiliate and Runwal Developers Pvt. Ltd will each hold a 50 per cent stake in the platform. Sanjay Dube has been appointed the chief executive officer (CEO) of the new venture. The platform will be seeded with several projects, which are under development, and will also have the option of acquiring some of Runwal Group’s operational retail malls.