Blackstone and realty firm Embassy Group on Monday filed an offer document with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for the country’s first real estate investment trust (REIT) that will raise over Rs 5,000 crore.

Embassy Office Parks, the joint venture firm of the private equity major and Embassy, filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the market regulator to launch REIT, which would be Asia’s largest in terms of a portfolio size of 33 million sq ft.

The joint venture has the option to raise a further 25 per cent from the offer.

Sebi had notified the regulations for REITs in 2014, allowing the setting up and listing of such trusts. However, not a single REIT could be launched so far.

REITs are similar to mutual funds as they collect money from investors and put them in real estate assets that may comprise commercial projects such as office buildings or shopping malls as well as housing complexes.

Investors in REIT earn from both dividend (from the rent collected) and wealth accumulation (capital appreciation of the underlying property) from the asset.

If successful in the country, they could provide an additional source of funding for realty companies at a time funding from the banking sector is difficult to come by and many public sector banks continuing to face the problem of bad loans.

Credit rating agency Icra on Monday said it has assigned the rating of Provisional AAA with a stable outlook to the REIT. Shubham Jain, group head at Icra, said it drew strength from the large and diversified leasing portfolio of Embassy REIT, which is spread across multiple office parks in different cities.