Brooke Bond Real Estates, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hindustan Unilever Ltd, has invited developers for joint development of their property – Brookefields - located at Whitefield in Bangalore.

Hindustan Unilever, which owns 26.5 acres at Brookefields, is planning to set up IT/ITeS SEZ.

The company has already got the property ‘notified' as an SEZ in October 2010. The last date for receiving bids is July 29. The land will be leased to co-developers, according to an advertisement placed by the company.

Proximity

Unlike now, where the company wants to enter into co-development of an IT/ITeS SEZ in the property, the company tried to unlock the value of this property in 2006-07 and had invited bids then too.

The Brookefields property came into HUL's fold when the company acquired Brooke Bond. The campus is also close to the Outer Ring Road, which is one of Bangalore's important IT hubs.

Brooke Bond India set up this campus after it shifted its base from Kolkata to Bangalore in the mid-1980s.

Real estate analysts describe the opportunity as a good proposition for developers as there would be not much of a cash outflow.

Not only developers, they point out that even a few IT companies, who are in the process of scaling up their operations in the city, have expressed interest in partnering with the FMCG giant.

However, concerns on the tax benefits that would accrue for occupiers of SEZs once the direct tax code regime is implemented in April 2012 remain.

“Finding the right tenant would be a challenge, since about 25 million sq ft space would be completed between now and 2014-15, when this project would be completed, if at all,” pointed out a real estate analyst.

Besides, he added that about 5-7 million sq ft space was already available in the nearby Whitefield.

The IT hub of Whitefield, which already has 3.6 million sq ft of non-captive SEZ space, would see development of 17.1 million sq ft in the near term.

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