By Shivani Muthanna, CNBC-TV18

Rs 20,000 crore! That's how much the Nirmal Lifestyle group claims it will invest to build twelve townships across India in the next 12 years. The company plans to rope in financial partners and tap the capital markets to raise money.

The Nirmal Lifestyle group, famous for their mall in Mulund, an eastern suburb of Mumbai is planning to do much more. It plans to develop 20 integrated townships under the brand name Lifestyle City across India.

The first phase, consisting of five townships, will start coming up on the outskirts of Mumbai, Panvel, Dombivalli, Kalyan, Pune and Indore by the first quarter of next year. That will cost USD five billion. But in a market where funding for real estate has been tightened and where sales have dropped by 40% in the last six months, the question is how will Nirmal Lifestyle raise that kind of money?

Darmesh Jain, CMD, Nirmal Lifestyle said, "When we talk of five billion we are talking about land cum construction costs and investments. Land will come from internal accruals and once each city matures we will have a partner. In the span of 12 - 18 months we also plan to go public.

According to sources, Nirmal Lifestyle has already recieved private equity infusion for one of it's cities from Mukesh Ambani promoted urban infrastructure fund earlier this year. The group has a total of five million sq feet already completed and under construction and hopes to scale up to 100 million sq feet by 2020. That will include its lifestyle cities which will be spread over 300 - 1000 acres.

For the Nirmal group, the townships will mark its entry into the middle income group housing market with apartments starting from Rs 20 lakh in its lifestyle cities and going up to Rs 1 crore. But the concern for the group will be raising funds in a tight real estate market.