Prestige Group to invest up to Rs 1,800-cr in six new malls

Bangalore-based real estate giant, the Prestige Group, plans to invest around Rs 1,500-1,800-crore to develop six malls, scheduled to be operational by 2013.

Of these six, the company will construct four malls in a joint venture with Singapore-based CapitaMalls Asia.

"We are planning to develop six projects by 2013 at an investment of Rs 250-300-crore per mall. Of these, four projects are in a joint venture with Singapore-based CapitaMalls. With this, the total number of our malls will increase to nine by 2013," Prestige Group's CEO, S Raghunandhan, told PTI here.

Fifty per cent of the funding would be from internal accruals and the rest through a mix of debt and investments from the JV partner, he said. 

The new malls would be coming up in Hyderabad, Kochi, Mangalore, Bangalore, Mysore and Shantiniketan, a township
developed by the group near Bangalore.

Currently, the group has two malls in Bangalore -- Forum at Koramangala and True Value Mall in Whitefield, which is a
discount mall with anchors such as Pantaloons, Tommy Hilfiger,
Megamart, Esprit and Louis Vuitton having their factory outlets.

The Group's third mall, Forum Vijaya, will be opened by mid-2011 in Chennai. The mall is being developed in a joint venture with Vijaya Productions and has a floor space of 7,00,000-sq ft.

Currently, the Group has developments spread over 20-million sq ft and about 13-million sq ft is under construction.

The company would be going for an IPO soon and plans to file its DRHP with Sebi soon, he said.