Mumbai: Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd (MLDL), the real estate development arm of the Mahindra Group, on Tuesday announced the launch of two industrial parks under the brand ‘Origins’ in Chennai and Ahmedabad that will entail an investment of around Rs600 crore.
This is the first time that the company is taking up smaller format industrial parks of sizes ranging between 250 and 500 acres. So far it has built two integrated business cities ‘Mahindra World City’ in Chennai and Jaipur of 1,500 acres and 3,000 acres, respectively.
The industrial park in north Chennai would comprise of 264 acres in the first phase and would be built by a joint venture between Mahindra World City Developers Ltd and Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo Corporation. While Mahindra Lifespace owns 60% stake in the JV, Sumitomo holds the rest. The industrial park would be developed with a total investment of around Rs400 crore.
“We have got all the approvals to start the project. It would be completed in the next 18-24 months,” said Sangeeta Prasad, chief executive officer of Mahindra World City, at a press conference.
The first phase of the second industrial park located in Ahmedabad would comprise 268 acres and is being developed along with International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank group, as a strategic partner. The park would be developed with an investment of around Rs200 crore. Part of the investment for the project would come from IFC.
In September, Mahindra Lifespace Developers had announced a strategic partnership with IFC in which the latter would invest $50 million to develop industrial parks across Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
“While we have got into partnerships with state governments not on a financial but on an operating level and signed state participation agreements, here we thought we needed different types of partnerships. The Japanese have been very large investors in the manufacturing sector in India and we decided we would partner with Sumitomo for the Chennai project. Land acquisition is still on for this project,” Arun Nanda, chairman, MLDL, said.
The company is also looking to bring in more industrial parks under its new brand Origins in different parts of the country, Prasad said, adding that the industrial clusters would enable faster go-to-market for both domestic and global companies, provide plug-and-play infrastructure; in-house expertise in operations and security, among other features.