Piya Singh
India’s booming organised retail trade is now attracting big moolah and bigger players. Large corporate groups are seeing huge business potential in providing specialised warehousing facilities to the retail giants. Tata Realty & Infrastructure, the infrastructure development arm of the Tata group, is the latest big-ticket entrant. The company, which is setting up a $1-billion offshore real estate fund, is now ready to roll out a chain of business and logistics parks across India.
The other big players eyeing a part of the business include GE Equipment Services, an arm of GE and Reliance Logistics, part of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. While GE hopes to build over a dozen parks for Indian Railways across the country, Reliance Logistics, with revenue of $400 million in 2006-07, now plans to cater to the logistics needs of other companies besides its own group firms.
Tata Realty & Infrastructure is likely to set up the logistics parks in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai, Hyderabad and Nagpur in the first phase. “At present, land aggregation for putting up these parks is underway in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai,” says a source. The company may also leverage land and warehouses owned by other companies in the group for this foray. These parks will house specialised warehousing facilities, cold storages and bulk storage with humidity control.
Earlier this year, Tata Realty and Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Tata Sons had signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai-based Jafza International — a sister concern of DP World — to set up a joint venture company that would develop and operate these logistics parks. Jafza International manages seven such mega facilities in four countries while the group operates the Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai Auto Zone and Techno Park, amongst others.
Confirming the development, Tata Realty & Infrastructure’s CEO Dinesh Chandiok says,“We are seriously looking at several locations for setting up the logistics parks especially in major metros.” But he refuses to divulge if the company has signed up any particular project. “We hope to make some announcements in six weeks.”
The proposed joint venture company hopes to acquire land with basic infrastructure. The size and amount of investment of these businesses and logistics parks are not yet known.
And all this while the GOI is playing with India's infrastructure investments.
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