have been caught in a crossfire between political parties BJP and NCP. Nobody disagrees that no project - however sublime it might be - should get away with undue concessions from Government, or even worse, build the project by trampling the land and aspirations of the poor. But the timing of the campaign against Lavasa is suspicious. After building on its own for over 10 years, and completing the first phase on equity and debt, now is the time the promoters are approaching public investors through an IPO. The ready question that comes to anyone’s mind is where were these critics during the past 10 years? Both BJP and Congress-NCP alliances had ruled the state in recent past. Union Environment Ministry, who has raised some issues now, was also not oblivious to this mammoth development for the last 10 years. The worst that HCC did was allow stakes by a couple of Sharad Pawar’s family members, which is an error that stands corrected since the last four years. But it was a move that continues to attract formidable political enemies for the project. Business enemies are also aplenty, as post this Rs. 2000 crore IPO, Lavasa will be valued at over Rs.
20,000 crore, making it the secondlargest real estate developer by market-cap, behind only DLF, and ahead of heavyweights like DB Realty, HDIL, Indiabulls Real Estate, & Godrej Properies. But it is still not clear whether Lavasa will
Just 3 hours from Mumbai, and 40 minutes from Pune, Lavasa has been designed on a philosophy of live- worklearn-play within walkable distances , and is coming up as 12 towns spread across 7 valleys. The whole development is spread across four phases, with the second phase getting completed in 2014, the third in 2017, and the final phase in 2021. be considered as a realty player or as an infra developer. Even there, it will displace all but Jaiprakash Associates, Unitech & GMR Infra, including majors like Lanco Infra, Jaypee Infra, & IRB Infra. Lavasa Corporation has recently come out in open through a national
campaign negating almost all the allegations point-by-point including shareholding pattern, land purchase, environmental issues, water usage, exclusivity, and revenue loss to Government. The State Government has also corrected its knee-jerk reaction and is now looking whether alleged revenue loss can be corrected through compounding. Several villages in the project area have also come forward to support the project. Government of India too is likely to look at the project from a holistic angle, considering the scale of the project that spans 25,000 acres. Seth Walchand Hirachand did things usually Governments do. That is why his companies Scindia Shipyard and Hindustan Aircraft later became the nationalized companies Hindustan Shipyard Ltd and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. Less than a century later, the scion of this entrepreneurial legacy, Ajit Gulabchand is taking Hindustan