Ambuja Neotia Group, which has emerged as one of the largest owners of hotels in the east, has started preparatory work to hit the capital market to finance a clutch of new hospitality projects under pipeline.
The group is holding preliminary talks with merchant bankers with the aim of filing a draft prospectus with the market regulator by the end of 2025. As part of the process, it is consolidating hotels scattered among various legal entities within the group under the umbrella of Ambuja Neotia Hotel Ventures Ltd.
The group has 600 rooms under operation, 80 per cent of which is managed by India Hotels Company Ltd, the Tata Group hospitality arm, which owns brands such as Taj, Vivanta, Ginger, SeleQtions among others.
Ambuja is also in the process of constructing another 250 rooms which will hit the market in phases in 2025 and the next year. They include, most notably, the revamped Raichak on Ganges where 160 rooms are coming up with Taj as the new operator. Moreover, Ambuja is also adding 30 additional rooms in Taj Chia Kutir in Kurseong, which has changed the face of luxury tourism in Darjeeling hills.
Additionally, the group has a land bank where a mix of resorts and city properties are going to come up.
“We have plans to add about 1,200 rooms over the next 5 years, entailing an investment of close to ₹3,000 crore. They are in different phases of planning, from design to approvals from various regulatory authorities,” Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman of the Ambuja Neotia Group told The Telegraph.
The group, which is a major real estate developer in the east, especially in Bengal, has so far built properties using internal accruals and debt. To scale with pace, the group needs to raise capital, as internal accruals and debt would not be enough to take multiple projects simultaneously, Neotia explained.
Out of the resort properties under pipeline, the first to reach construction phase is Ghoom, where an 80-room resort under the name ‘Himal Kutir’ is going to come up. The property will have an unobstructed view of the Kanchenjunga mountain range, Neotia informed.
Apart from Ghoom, the group has land banks in Kalimpong, Lataguri, Digha, Sunderban, Calcutta, Siliguri and Haldia in Bengal and Rabong in Sikkim, where new properties would come up in phases.
While bulk of the expansion is within the group, Ambuja’s hospitality portfolio also includes a joint venture with IHCL for ‘Tree of Life’ branded boutique resorts. There are 18 properties with 200 rooms in operation, majority of which are in management contract. IHCL and Ambuja plan to scale it to 50 hotels in the medium term.
Neotia declined to hazard a guess at the quantum of fund raise by the proposed IPO. “We will delve into that not before the third quarter of this calendar,” he argued, reminding that ₹3,000 crore will come up in phases and there would be components of internal accruals and debt.