AEZ plans malls in the UK, Dubai

Real estate developer AEZ Infratech is planning to foray into West Asian and the UK markets by setting up its concept shopping mall, Celebration City, 10 of which will be constructed across India in the next 3-4 years.

The company had recently announced its plans to set up a Celebration City mall in Ghaziabad near here, entailing an investment of Rs 500 crore. Celebration City provides complete solutions for various community events such as a wedding, from shopping to planning and banquet space for the occasion to its customers.

"There is a big Asian population base in West Asia and the UK where it is quite expensive to host such social get togethers. We want to take Celebration City to Dubai and Burmingham to provide complete cost-effective solutions for social get togethers to the Asians living there," AEZ Group Chief Operating Officer (Marketing and Sales) Sanjay Kackar said.

He said the Celebration City would also come up at 10 different locations in India including Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune.

The company has not earmarked any investment plans yet for the nine shopping malls, Kackar informed, saying it would vary according to the size of each mall.

The company expects returns to the tune of nearly Rs 100 crore from each Celebration City mall every year.

The Group also is looking at tapping the capital markets to partly fund its future expansion projects including IT parks and IT SEZ.

"We are also thinking to hit the capital market in next 12 months to fund our future projects and capital expenditure purposes," Kackar added.

He, however, did not divulge any further details about the company's proposed IPO.

Besides, AEZ is also developing two IT parks. "We are developing an IT SEZ in 50 acres of land in the NCR," Kackar added.

The other IT park would be developed in a 15 acres of land in the NCR.

AEZ has 10 million sq ft of land bank under development, of which three million is for commercial purpose. "We have 100 acres of land in the NCR," Kackar said.