Sahara lines up Rs 800 crore for each City Home

Sahara Infrastructure & Housing will be investing around Rs 800 crore in each of its City Homes across 217 cities, for which it has already acquired 20,000 acres.

The project will be undertaken in two phases, with the first phase covering 102 cities.

Sunder Lal, senior advisor to Sahara Infrastructure and sales head of Sahara City Homes, said the investment per project in all the cities would be Rs 600-800 crore, exclusive of land cost. This was just the investment in the residential part of the City Home project, he added.

So far 20,000-acre land had been acquired for the various City Home projects and registered in the company's name, Lal said.

He said the first phase, the land requirement of which was likely to be in the region of 13,000 acres, would be completed in five-six years.

Sahara had received clearances for six cities "� Ahmedabad, Gwalior, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Indore. Lal said 59 applications were awaiting clearances, of which seven-eight were expected to be cleared by August.

Commercial development in the projects "� which will include hotels, retail outlets, entertainment floors, hospitals and schools "� will account for 4-5 per cent of the total area, or as the state government regulations demand. The City Home sales head said the size of each project would vary between 100 and 360 acres.

On whether the group would look at tie-ups for the commercial development, Lal said many companies had approached for the purpose, but nothing had been finalised yet.

It is more likely that Sahara would look at a tie-up that would cover its projects across the country, he said. Lal further said many overseas funds had approached the group for funding the projects, but such options were not being considered at the moment.

The residential product-mix in the project will be a combination of high-rise, mid-rise and independent houses. The high-rise apartments with nine floors will have one, two and three-bedroom apartments along with penthouses, while the mid-rise buildings will stand on six floors above the stilt with three-four bedroom duplex apartments. The independent houses include row houses, semi-detached houses and bunglows.