To complete Bangalore IT SEZ within 20-24 months: Gulf Oil

Subhash Pramanik, managing director, Gulf Oil India in an interview with CNBC-TV18 outlined about the company's much talked about IT SEZ project in Bangalore. The company has 40 acres of land under development for this project. From that 30 acres will be SEZ and the balance 10 acres will be non SEZ. It expects this project to be completed in about 20-24 months.

Below is the verbatim transcript of his interview with Udayan Mukherjee and Mitali Mukherjee of CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: Market is quite excited about your plans of developing that 40 acre IT SEZ. Can you take us through what stage that is in and what is the upside from there?

A: It has taken us a little while to really get to this ground breaking situation which is planned in the next two months. We had been bogged down with a lot of uncertainty because of the overall economic position. But, Bangalore seems to be coming out of that situation and we see clear position ahead.

Also our project is located extremely well. It is on the highway about 14 kms from the airport. So, that way the location is very good. We are getting a lot of queries, so enquiry is going on, we felt that this is the right time to start the project.

This would be the project where we have got 40 acres under development. From that 30 acres is going to be SEZ and the balance 10 (acres) will be non SEZ which will be along the highway. It would be having the hotels, there will be service apartments and retail. That would be the first layer.

We will have the SEZs behind it spreading over 30 acres. The total development which we will be doing will be about 5.05 million sq feet, so that is the plan which we are working. We expect this project to be completed in about 20-24 months from the start. That is the overall plan.

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Q: Can you give us some execution timelines, by when you will start booking the first bookings?

A: Yes, about 20-24 months.

Q: No, in terms of revenues flowing?

A: Our revenues will flow in from the end of the second year. That is, third year onwards we will the revenues.

Q: I believe the structure of the deal is such that Gulf Oil stands to get 30% revenues from the project, what would your estimate be then in terms of revenues you can start getting in once this 20-24 month phase is borne out?

A: The idea is as of now we are working on just a leasing model. On that model basis taking the current lease rates that are prevalent we should be doing about Rs 80 crore plus per year.

Q: You also have a plot of land in Hyderabad we understand. Any finality to what kind of development you want to put down to that pass?

A: No, not yet finalized. We are still on the drawing board and we have just got the alignment for the major 100 feet road going through the property. So, that changes some of the plans which we had earlier. At the moment we are still on the drawing board there.