Country Club plans Rs 600 cr investment over two years

Country Club India (CCIL), a Rs 250 crore leisure company has lined up an investment of Rs 600 crore over the next two years.

With the proposed investment, the company will build service apartments in Hyderabad and Bangalore with an estimated capital expenditure of Rs 200 crore along with other projects for expanding the present business.

CCIL will fund its expansion projects through internal accruals and a mix of debt and equity funds. The service apartments would be known under the brand name Country Condos and would come up on land available near CCIL's existing properties. CCIL has 100 properties across the country, out of which 25 are owned by the company and 75 are franchisee properties.

"Service apartments are neither branded nor networked. With our infrastructure we can build about 1,000 service apartments using only 10 per cent of our floor space index (FSI). These apartments will go in a very big way in not only generating more revenues for our company, but will also be a great asset to all our members," said Y Rajeev Reddy, CMD, CCIL.

The company recently launched five Golf Village properties across India with an investment of Rs 500 crore. These properties would come up in the four metroes "� two in Bangalore, one each in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai.

CCIL is also looking at the markets in US, Dubai and Malaysia. "There are a lot of Asian settlers in these regions and opening clubs here will further our presence," added Reddy.

In India, CCIL has zeroed in on to properties in Delhi and Kolkata to start operations. It is in the process of acquiring few existing clubs in these cities and would upgrade them to CCIL's level.

JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have picked up shares in CCIL and Reddy says there are a lot of institutional investors, who have been showing interest in investing in the company.

Currently, there are leading banks like Citibank, ICICI, Standard Chartered, HSBC have either co-branded or directly associated in funding the membership of the Country Club.