Leisure infrastructure company Country Club India Ltd is looking for a strategic investor “to fund its expansion plans”.

The promoters, who currently hold a 75 per cent stake in the company, are willing to reduce it to 60 per cent, according to Y Rajeev Reddy, Chairman and Managing Director.

Country Club, with over 90 properties across the country and abroad, is one of the three major time-share holiday resorts companies in India; the other two being Club Mahindra and Sterling Holidays.

Of its properties, 32 are company-owned, 23 are on long-lease and the rest are affiliated properties.

Property renovation It is renovating its resorts and has completed six properties in Chennai, Kovalam, Coimbatore, Bandipur (Karnataka) and in Dubai.

This would entail a substantial investment.

“As we plan to double our membership base from the current 4 lakh in the next three-four years, we also need to have more properties to cater to the expanded member base,” he said.

According to Reddy, the company has short-listed a few properties in London for acquisition.

Bank borrowings Country Club, which was a debt-free company till a few years ago, borrowed ₹300 crore from various banks on a long-term basis to redeem $30-million (around ₹145 crore today) worth of unsecured FCCB (foreign currency convertible bonds) two years ago, and earmarked the rest for property renovation and setting up stand-alone fitness centres.

Fitness centres So far, it has set up 22 fitness centres in places such as Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

“Our plan is to have at least 100 such centres in the next couple of years,” said Reddy.

Some properties in prime localities have excess land.

“We are toying with the idea of liquidating some of these non-core (land) assets to fund our expansion,” he said.

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