Pradeep Jain to tie up with Sabeer Bhatia

July 18, 2008	(Be the first to rate this story!)  Loading ...
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Over a year ago, Pradeep Jain, the 43-year-old chairman of Parsvnath Developers Ltd, was gung-ho about the Indian property market. Asked about the slowdown in the property market, Jain countered by wanting to know a single property whose price had actually fallen. Of course, today things are markedly different and prices have fallen, but that is another debate.

For now, public attention is focused on Jain and his company, due to his latest tie-up with Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia for a hi-tech city spread over nearly 11,200 acres in Panchkula, in the vicinity of the landmark city of Chandigarh. Widely perceived as the white knight for Nanocity Haryana Ltd, Jain has picked up a 38 per cent stake in the firm for Rs 41.5 crore and has promised to invest another Rs 400 crore in equity and debt to develop the city.

The partnership had been widely expected. Bhatia has spoken of the project as his dream. In Jain, he has found a stockbroker turned realty developer who has over 210 million square feet under the works within 18 years of having founded his firm. The Nanocity is premised on the dream of developing a knowledge city, and a green-field one at that, next to Chandigarh, which once was seen as the electronics and semiconductor manufacturing hub in North India.

The suburb of Mohali , which abuts Le Corbusier’s famous creation, is home to the country’s oldest and largest chip manufacturing facility — the government-owned Semiconductor Complex Ltd — and the likes of Punwire, Fujitsu Communications and a TV picture tube company among others (some of which have since shut down).

In doing this deal, Jain has also put behind him last year’s disappointment of not having been granted a licence to operate mobile phone services in the country. Knowing Jain, and having heard and seen so much of Bhatia, this may well be the beginning of a partnership that seeks to link the grimy brick-and-mortar world to that of invisible nano-particles.

News Published Under:   Real Estate Developers |

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