Puravankara to bid for airports

Star Worth Infrastructure, Puravankara Group’s wholly owned infrastructure subsidiary, is scouting for a foreign partner to bid for airport projects.

The company already has a tie-up with a Southeast Asian firm for road projects.

Ashish Puravankara, director of Puravankara Group, told DNA Money that the government’s plan to expand and modernise regional airports will throw up huge opportunity for infrastructure companies like theirs.

He said Star Worth will form joint ventures with other infrastructure companies to bid for such projects. The Bangalore-based realty firm has also drawn up plans to foray into the power plant construction.

Its plan to enter into the hospitality sector has been put on the backburner for now. In the commercial segment, instead of developing malls, the Puravankara Group is looking at building a family entertainment zone, which will not have the designer label outlets, next year.

The project will come up in Bangalore. The company is yet to identify land for it. Ravi Puravankara, chairman and managing director of the Puravankara Group, said the Provident Housing, the group’s affordable housing subsidiary, will launch schemes in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2011.

Currently, Puravankara owns two tracts of land — 25 acres residential and 25,000 square feet commercial — in Sri Lanka, where it plans to build luxury and mid-segment homes this year.

“A five-year tax exemption and imports without any custom duties makes foraying into Sri Lanka an attractive proposition for realtors,” said Ravi Puravankara.

He said Provident Housing will roll out three projects in Bangalore, Chennai and Coimbatore across six million square feet (msft) while Puravankara Projects Ltd will launch six projects across 13 msft catering to the luxury segment. The realtor is also planning to enter the Ahmedabad, Pune, Kolkata and Nagpur markets.