INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - NOVEMBER 16^th - NOVEMBER 30^th - 2007

NITESH IN JOINT VENTURE WITH SAGAR GROUP FOR RS 1,000CR REALTY PROJECT IN BANGALORE

Real estate company Nitesh Estates is floating an equal joint venture with city-based diversified business house Sagar Group to develop a Rs 1,000-crore mixed use real estate project.

This is the second instance of the 31 yearold Nitesh Shetty led realty major floating a JV with a corporate group for unlocking value through real estate development. Last year, it entered into a Rs 100-crore housing project deal with the ITC Group in Bangalore.

The Nitesh Sagar JV is projected to develop about 1,000 premium residential apartments, a school, hospital and a retail block over 20 acres in south Bangalore. The group, with significant land holding in the city, has interests in hospitals, education and automobile sales. The project value, excluding the land price, is estimated at Rs 1,000 crore. This include the development cost and sale value.

Nitesh Estates executive director L S Vaidyanathan said the company was focusing on setting up JVs with corporate groups with sizable land banks for unlocking real estate value. Nitesh, he added, was looking at this opportunity as another business stream. It may be noted that several large corporates in Bangalore, like the UB Group, for instance, have encashed on the city's real estate boom either through joint developments or outright sale of land.

The decade-old Nitesh Group currently has around 8 million sq ft of real estate development with four business verticals streamlined under highend residential, office space, hotels and retail projects. Nitesh shot into the limelight when it sewed up back-to-back deals with private equity giants like Och-Ziff and Citigroup. It forayed into hospitality when it unveiled plans to bring Ritz Carlton into India through a luxury project in Bangalore.