Unitech,Valdel form equal JV to tap malls & hotels segment

Valdel Group announces new ventures in malls & hotels segment, Bangalore.

Friday, January 19, 2007: REALTY major Unitech has floated a 50:50 joint venture with Bangalore-based Valdel Group for tapping the mall and hospitality business in Karnataka. The JV is expected to invest about Rs 200 crore in developing around one million sq ft of mixed-use real estate development.

The move is part of an increasing trend of realty giants looking for regional partners to strengthen their national footprint. The JV will be limited to Karnataka, looking to tap the opportunities across the urban centres in the state. The JV, Unitech-Valdel , will identify an operator to run the mid-priced hotels .

As part of the deal, Valdel has hived off the Family Mart branded mall business in its retail portfolio into the JV company. Apart from malls, the planned projects would also have three-four star hotels. "The JV is poised to start work on 6 lakh sq ft of development in Bangalore and Mysore," M J Shantharam, MD of Valdel, told ET.

Valdel, which has an engineering base, entered the retail real estate play in recent years. After hiving off the mall operations, Valdel is set to focus on expanding its network of its retail brands Dailys and Centra across the state. It must be mentioned that Dailys is the supermarket chain operating with 2,500-4 ,000 sq ft outlets (offering food, groceries and other branded daily essentials), while Centra is a larger format play.

Mr Shantharam said Valdel Retail was in the midst of raising about $6 million for fuelling the expansion plan.

We have started talks with a few funds. The gameplan is to accelerate our retail expansion to show up with a network of 40 outlets in the near future," he added.

Valdel's engineering business - through two separate JVs with L&T and US-based S&B Engineers & Constructors - offers integrated services to the oil & gas, refinery, petrochemicals and pharmaceutical sector

For any further queries:


Valdel Group
4A, Nitesh Broadway, M.G. Road,
Bangalore - 560 001, India
Phone: +91-80-4191 0000
Fax: +91-80-2559 7698