Advance India Projects
Ltd, a real estate development
company headquartered
in New Delhi,
has planned to set up nearly 20
low-cost budget shopping malls
named 'Celebration Bazaar'
mainly across the northern
region. Each of these malls,
expected to cost Rs 80-100 crore,
will consist of about 2,00,000
sqft of built-up area.
"We plan to set up 19 such
bazaars in north India within the
next three years. We have already
commenced work at Bareilly and
Meerut in Uttar Pradesh and at
Khanna in Punjab," Arif Sheikh,
President - Retail, Advance India
Projects Ltd, told Projectmonitor
on the sidelines of 'The India
Shopping Centre Forum' held in
Mumbai recently.
The project would be funded
through a combination of internal
resources and debt, he said,
adding that the bazaars would be
fully owned by the company.
India has 12 million shops,
the highest globally, but also
the smallest space per outlet in
the world-at an average of
around 500 sqft per shop. The
company's aim
is not to compete
with high street shops but
to rather get those high street
shops into these bazaars,
Sheikh explained. The bazaars
will have all the facilities of
shopping malls but at onefourth
of the cost of
what retailers
currently pay as rentals.
AIPL has also entered into a
joint venture with CapitaMalls
Asia, a leading Singapore-based
shopping mall owner and developer,
to build full-fledged shopping
malls in Udaipur
(Rajasthan), Nagpur (Maharashtra)
and Jalandhar (Punjab).
The company had earlier
opened a fully owned shopping
mall in Amritsar.