Building blocks

The Vatika Group is setting up a spa and a concept mall in Haryana

In Gurgaon's overheated real estate market, yet another player is chalking out ambitious plans to meet the surging demand for housing, offices and entertainment.

Sitting in his modish glass-and-steel office in Vatika Triangle on the Gurgaon-Mehrauli road, Anil Bhalla, the low-profile managing director of the Rs 75 crore Vatika Group, shares the bigger vision of his company.

"We want to bid for development projects not just in India but also in London and other places abroad," he says. The process has begun with a bid for a housing project in Dubai's artificial island, Palms. The company is looking at projects in Milan and Toronto too.

Until its first big foray into a multi-storeyed office complex in Gurgaon in 2001 "" the 1,70,000 sq ft, First India Place, designed by the London-based Studio U+A at the cost of Rs 35 crore "" the company had no major project to show off.

But six months ago, it opened the 1,30,000 sq ft, Rs 28-crore Vatika Triangle designed by the Japanese firm Nikken Sekkai. In 2005, the Rs 41-crore Vatika Atrium will also come up in Gurgaon.

Bhalla has a multi-pronged business strategy to push growth in the next two years. For starters, Vatika City, a 1,800-unit housing project is coming up in Haryana's Sohna region. The 30-acre Vatika Garden Retreat is being turned into a 100-room Ayurvedic spa. A five-star hotel in Gurgaon is also in the pipeline.

"We are negotiating with several international brands for the hotel project," says Bhalla. It also plans to take its restaurant called Fox, to cities like Ludhiana and Kolkata. While Vatika has budgeted Rs 27 crore for the spa, another Rs 8 crore will go towards setting up of four restaurants in the next 14 months.

And when other investors are shying away from mall projects, Bhalla insists that positioning of the mall matters. Says the executive director the company and his son, Gaurav Bhalla: "We will position it like a market and create the atmosphere of an Indian bazaar "" a bit of Lajpat Nagar and Karol Bagh."

True to word, the Vatika City Market, to be located across the road from the First India Place complex, will house homegrown brands like Liberty shoes and Sita Fabrics as well as traditional stuff such as jootis and junk jewellery.

Interestingly, over the years, Bhalla has tried his hands at various businesses. In the pre-nationalisation days, he had coal mining rights. Later, he set up Delta Tools, a hand tools company in West Bengal.

Known to be very close to the state's late chief minister, Jyoti Basu, Bhalla could not save Delta Tools from closing down owing to labour problems. He moved to Delhi and betted on the farm land development boom of the early 90s. Nearly 3,000 acres of land was bought in Haryana's Sohna region.

Purnendu Chatterjee, an associate of the George Soros Fund Management Group and an investor in Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, extended a helping hand by becoming a 50 per cent equity partner in his First India Place project. He sold back the shares to Bhalla later.

So while the real estate market is still hot, Bhalla wants to expand his territory.