Sahara City work to gain momentum soon

The Hitavada, Nagpur [26 April, 2007]

By Promit Mukherjee

The first major township announced on Wardha Road way back in 2004, the Rs. 1000 crore ambitious Sahara City Homes project, is about to be propelled into the next orbit of construction and should be buzzing with activity within a month or so.

The Sahara Group, which has planned 217 modem townships across the country, hasn't forgotten its Nagpur project and will soon be working against time to complete it by early 2010. Head of Sahara Housing, Sushanto Roy, was in city on Wednesday to check up on the project and breathe life into its marketing effort.

Son of Sahara India Chairman, Subroto Roy, Sushanto interacted with Sahara City agents and also spent hours at the project site going over proposed construction plans and various time schedules.

Talking exclusively to The Hitavada, Roy said that he had led a high-level team from the company as a part of a reconnoitering mission to examine the status of the project. "The team is here because we feel that the right time to launch the project has finally arrived. Though I cannot mention any exact date of launch but within a month-and-a-half, the project would definitely take off, he declared.

The command area of the project, called as Sahara City Homes, is located around 7 kilometres from Hotel Pride on the Nagpur-Wardha highway and is spread over an area of 106.75 acres.

The Rs.1000 crore township was announced way back in December 2004 but it sort of fizzled out after some time and Sahara City- one of the projects responsible for taking land prices on Wardha road through the roof - suddenly appeared like a dead investment. Rumours of the company first shelving the project and then deciding to sell it off to some other construction started making the rounds.

Agents were at their wits end telling investors that nothing of this sort was happening. Silence from Sahara Group officials didn't help them any.

Roy on Wednesday clarified that there were no plans as such. "We had never shelved it. We owe it to the people who have booked dwellings. We can't just move away," he said quashing the rumours.

Roy said that the process of seeking approvals had delayed the project. “The entire process of huge accumulation of huge pieces of land and seeking all kinds of approval for a township is a time consuming and tedious process," he said.

He added that since all the approvals were now in place and the entire land for the project was acquired, the project could start anytime."

We are in the process of finalising a tie-up with some company for building the township and once that is done, work will start," said Roy. However, he did not divulge the name of the company which Sahara was planning a tie-up with but did not rule out roping in a foreign firm. He said that once the construction starts, the project would take approximately four to four and a half year to complete.

The project would be developed into a world class township and would provide accommodation to approximately 3,000 families. Out of these, the company has already registered close to 800 bookings and in spite of a three year delay, there is still a huge demand. The project would have all the latest facilities of a large scale township and would be one of its kind that the city has never witnessed before. It would have residential facilities in the form of apartments, row houses, penthouses, one, two and three bedroom duplexes and bungalows with a price range between Rs.14 lakh and 1.5 crore. Apart from these, it would have a school with all modern facilities like swimming pool, basketball court etc a full-scale stadium with flood lights, a three screen multiplex, postal service, banks and almost everything which are a part and parcel of a city. It would also have a 24-hour power supply. The township will also have its own transport service to the city centre on a daily basis.

Roy said that Sahara Housing had made a list of 217 cities where it would come up with such townships. "Among all the cities in the list Nagpur is probably the fourth or the fifth one," he said. The first project would start in a couple of days in Lucknow and in the next one month, work would concurrently start in Nagpur and Indore.

The team headed by Roy comprised of Head (Marketing) of Sahara Housing Amitesh Ahuja, Head (Sales) Sunder Lal, official spokesperson Suryaveer Singh, Team CEO Harmeet Singh, Advisor GC Srivastava, Project Manager S.Chaurasia, Head (Construction and Planning) Asad Ahmed and Head (Land Acquisition) Rupesh Singh