In one of the largest transactions in the Indian commercial real estate segment this year, Canada-based Brookfield Asset Management has agreed to buy nearly 4 million sq ft of office and retail assets in the Mumbai suburb of Powai for a deal that will be close to $1 billion.

The deal is said to be the largest purchase of commercial assets in Mumbai to date, as international investors, including Blackstone and GIC, as well as China’s Fosun and Dalian Wanda, increasingly turn to the subcontinent for high growth opportunities.

The portfolio of retail and office space was developed in the Mumbai suburb of Powai by the Hiranandani Group, a real estate developer controlled by billionaire Niranjan Hiranandani and his brother Surendra.

“People are talking about big projects. Hiranandani deal may be the largest in Mumbai in commercial space,” Shobhit Agarwal, managing director for Capital Markets at JLL India was quoted as saying in The Hindu.

Japan’s Nomura Group, Deloitte Consulting and Tata Consultancy are among the big name tenants leasing space in the Powai portfolio, with reports indicating that the set of commercial buildings are fully leased. The preliminary agreement is expected to be concluded within four to five months after the assets are transferred into a separate corporate entity.

The deal with Hiranandani is Brookfield’s second major property investment in India, and the latest of several moves by the asset manager in the subcontinent.

In 2014 Brookfield agreed with Unitech Corporate Parks to pay $525 million for a subsidiary of that Indian developer which held 100 percent of four special economic zones and 60 percent of another two of the office park developments. Brookfield later went on to buy out the remaining 40 percent equity in the two remaining projects.

The Canadian firm also got involved in Indian infrastructure just over a year ago, buying six road and three power projects from India’s Gammon Infrastructure Projects in a joint venture with a fund controlled by India’s Kotak Mahindra Capital. In July of this year Brookfield Asset Management also signed a preliminary agreement to buy about $1 billion in Indian distressed assets through a joint venture with the largest lender in the South Asian nation.

Chinese real estate investors and developers have also begun turning their attention to India, with Dalian Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin meeting Indian prime minister Narenda Modi in June to talk property deals. The Chinese tycoon said following that meeting that Wanda may invest in projects worth an eventual $10 billion in India. And just last month reports in the Indian press indicated that Guo Guangchang’s Fosun Group was preparing its own $1 billion real estate investment platform in the country.

The deal comes in the wake of India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley visited Canada.

Jaitley met his Canadian counterpart Bill Morneau and the country’s minister of international trade Chrystia Freeland last week, and also held a series of meetings with major investors, including the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board.

New Delhi needs immediate investments of at least $1 trillion to build roads, ports, airports and power stations as it seeks to expand its economy and raise living standards. The government hopes private companies will contribute half the amount.

But so far it has struggled to raise enough private money, with at least $10 billion worth of road projects stuck because of difficulty in obtaining land. Many power projects remain unfinished owing to regulatory delays.

Canada is only the latest stop on Jaitley’s campaign to raise investments from global cash cows.

After the meetings in Toronto, Jaitley was upbeat about the prospects of Canadian investors upping their stake in India: “They all look at policy, they look at prospects, they look at the risks involved, and then collectively they weigh that and then they see comparable economies, as to what are the other options they have. And from all counts, India rates fairly high on their priorities.”

The CPP Fund, for instance, controls nearly US $225 billion and it hosted a meeting for the finance minister. He pointed out that in the past 24 months or so, Canadian investors, including pension funds, have invested nearly $12 billion in India.

“These funds have a lot of investible surplus and therefore, they have to look at a wider canvas of targets where they want to invest, particularly because of the returns they get in our part of the world, are much higher than what they will get here,” Jaitley said.

Sovereign funds, pension funds and large public institutions have been entering the Indian real estate market through acquisitions anticipating relatively better economic growth and therefore returns.

Institutional investors including Blackstone Group, Singapore's GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Goldman Sachs and Qatar Investment Authority have been investing in Indian realty assets for the last few years.

As per an estimate by Knight Frank about $2.3 billion, or about Rs.15,000 crore was invested in the sector by foreign private equity firms in 2015 alone.