|
Thiruvananthapuram: The race for the Smart City information technology park project in Kochi is heating up with two new players throwing their hat into the ring.
Insiders here say this latest development could throw a serious spanner into the works for Dubai internet City's (DIC) bid to build the site in Kerala.
The latest entrant is the Muthoot Pappachan group, which announced its intentions yesterday, just two days after Hong Kong-based JB Group said it, too, had met the chief minister and submitted a proposal for Smart City.
"We were not aware that other parties would also be considered for the project," Thomas George Muthoot, director of the Muthoot Pappachan group said when asked why the group had not approached the government years ago for the project, despite being based in the same state.
The integral part of Muthoot's proposal is there will be a considerable chunk of equity set aside for non-resident Keralites. "We have offered to give a 26 per cent equity stake to the state government and 23 per cent to non-resident Keralites - and keep a 51 per cent share as promoters," Thomas George Muthoot said.
The Muthoot group, which has varied business interests such as hospitality, infrastructure and financial services, has an IT facility in Kochi, named Technopolis. This project, situated in the Cochin Special Economic Zone, has an outlay of Rs50 million and has a built-up space of 355,000 square feet.
Muthoot group officials said the Technopolis had been fully sold out to various corporates including Cognisant, Sutherland, Wipro and Williams Lea.
Thomas George Muthoot said the group had met chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan and made the offer to set up the Smart City project with a built-up area of 20 million square feet.
The group has proposed to offer Rs90,000 for a cent (one hundredth of an acre) of land as a one-time lease rental towards the 200 acres earmarked for Smart City and has requested the government to provide the land on a 99-year lease.
With the JB group and the Muthoot group having joined in, industry experts here feel that the race for the Smart City project has been thrown wide open.
|
