By Vipin Agnihotri
It has come into the notice of The India Street that Sahara India is working overtime to diversify into the housing finance business. If experts are to be believed, the move could be seen as an attempt by the company to integrate financing with its residential real estate business. According to sources, company may leverage its existing presence in para banking for getting a foothold in housing finance.
In an exclusive interview with The India Street Sahara Infrastructure and Housing head Sushanto Roy said: “It’s still in very preliminary stages and we will be able to talk about it in more details in the next three to four weeks.”
Initial signs are that the group plans to develop 217 townships spread across 11,000 hectares in various parts of the country. These projects would be spread over 100-300 acres each and in all, would constitute over 30.3 lakh sq metre of built-up commercial area and 1,008.4 lakh square metre of built-up residential area.
Interestingly, all these projects will be developed in tier II and tier III cities. “Such cities do not create unwanted pressures arising out of input costs, mainly land prices. In addition, there is also involvement of speculators and there is a genuine end user demand for good and affordable housing. All this make tier II and tier III cities very healthy markets,” pointed out Roy.
In the first stage, the company plans to develop 102 townships and the remaining 115 in the second phase. According to company sources, group has already completed land acquisition for 75-80 projects and partly for about 125. In all, company is planning an investment of about Rs 1,500- 1,700 crore towards the land acquisition. “We aim at generating a total of about Rs 2.4 lakh crore as revenue from these projects,” said Roy.
It is worthwhile pointing that the Indian housing industry is highly fragmented, with the unorganized sector, comprising small builders and contractors, accounting for around 70% of the housing units constructed and the organized sector accounting for the rest. Sahara India foray into the housing finance business will give a boost to the organized sector comprises large builders and government or government-affiliated entities.
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