Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Sahara Lake City to pitch for tourists

Leading business conglomerate Sahara India will start marketing its Lake City near Pune from January next year targetting a niche customer segment.

''We have put in place a marketing strategy to attract customers for the city and it is likely to be launched by January next,'' O P Dixit, head of the project and deputy director of Sahara India Commercial Corporation told visiting mediapersons recently.

The city is spread over 5,600 acres of land in Amby Valley amidst the scenic Sahyadri Ranges and is just two hours' drive from Mumbai.

Describing the place as ''India's first self-sustained and digital city'', Dixit said its Unique Selling Proposition will be that the township will offer ''world's best living in the lap of the nature''.

The company is targetting non-resident Indians, celebrities, top executives of leading Indian and foreign companies for an outright sale of an estimated 10,000 houses, all of which will be completed by 2007.

Around Rs 2,800 crore (Rs 28 billion) has already been spent on the sprawling city and will house a population of around 35,000, Dixit said.

''We see a big market for these houses among NRIs of the South East Asia, Hong Kong and the West Asia,'' he said.

''In fact, we are already getting encouraging response from them who have visited the city and seemed impressed,'' he added.

There will be villas, apartments and chalets and the city will have a fully equipped commercial complex offering the state-of-the-art infrastructure to meet all business needs.

The city will have a 75-bed hospital, schools, shopping malls, restaurants, golf course, a small airport, sports complex and other modern amenities to make it self-sustained.

''The idea behind developing this city was to offer a better life amidst nature yet having all the modern facilities,'' said Dixit. It will have man-made lakes and water bodies with a total shore length of around 21 km. Envisioned by Sahara India Pariwar chairman Subrata Roy, the work on the multi-crore project began in early 1990s.

To maintain the beauty and environment of the place, Sahara India will continue to take care the city even after all the houses are sold.

Sahara will float a new company that will focus on the maintenance of the city, Dixit said. To keep it pollution free, only CNG (compressed natural gas) and battery operated vehicles will be operated in the city.

All the proposals to buy apartments in the city will be screened by a special committee set up by the company.

The group has also proposed to develop the city as a tourist spot by introducing adventure sports, parks, variety entertainment areas, bird sanctuary, handicraft exhibition centre, equestrian school, man-made beach and acqa recreation centre.

The project has come as a boon for the eight villages located around the city.

''Local people have given us tremendous support and the project has certainly improved their lives,'' he said.

''We have offered employment opportunities to thousands of villagers and set up schools and medical facilities for them,'' Dixit said.

But it was not a smooth sailing for Sahara India. The project initially faced stiff opposition from environmentalists on the ground that it was coming up in tribal land and the local inhabitants were not getting adequate compensation.

The opposition, Dixit said, slowly petered out when the company started developing the city without degrading its surroundings and environment and spelt out its measures for welfare of the local populace.

He said environment conservation has been the bedrock of the project and everything was being constructed keeping that in mind.

UNI

ALSO READ:
More Money Headlines

Tell us what you think of this report