21 January 2008, New Delhi: Parsvnath Developers has announced an investment of Rs 60,000 crore in coming five years in diversified areas such as SEZs, airports, express ways and retails business. Mr. Pradeep Jain, Chairman of Parsvnath Developers said, “We shall be bidding for upcoming airports such as Udaipur, Greater Noida, Maharashtra and other states. Besides, SEZs will be another major investment area in the coming three to five years”. Mr. Jain answered about the source of funding, “Funding for new businesses will not be an issue… We shall leverage our huge large land bank”.
Parsvnath had several project in hand. Parsvnath would be focusing on development of SEZs, hotels, highways, retail and telecom.
Parsvnath’s application for the unified license was rejected by the Department of Telecom last week. So they can’t make their entry in telecom business. On this point, Mr. Jain said, “We will get into the telecom sector and our investment will be in the range of up to Rs 20,000 crore”. However, he has not explained the strategy and said that the company is watching the situation.
On the issue of other businesses, Jain said the company would enter the retail business in a big way and would soon announce its roadmap. The company is in talks with some of the major international retailers. Parsvnath is also believed to be in talks with two French majors Carrefour and Club Casino to set up retail chains in India. Jain said that “we are sure to open our first retail store in 2008 and possibly will start with Delhi”. Jain said that the roll out of the retail outlets would start from this calendar year itself.
On the topic of types of retail stores and branding, Jain said that the details were being worked out but the stores would be in large formats such as complete food bazaar and as far as branding was concerned, the company would take a decision after finalizing the overseas partner. The company owns over 14 million square feet of land for retail business in 48 cities and that would be an advantage for Parsvnath as all other prospective retailers would have to bank upon them for space.
