Pride Hotels to invest Rs 340 cr for expansion

Mumbai: The Pride Hotels, a Mumbai-based five-star business hotel chain, plans to go in for an initial public offering in the first quarter of 2008 to part-fund its total expansion plan of Rs 340 crore.

The group has already received part investment of Rs 45 crore from Kotak India Real Estate Fund making it an 11.1 per cent stake holder in the group’s existing capital. Rs 10 crore have also been received from a Mauritius-based primary fund.

Mr S.P. Jain, Chairman of Pride Hotels told newspersons, “We currently offer 430 rooms in Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Pune and Chennai. The expansion plan is geared towards taking the number to 1126 adding 696 rooms by 2009-2010, covering western and southern India.”

Expansion

Pride plans to setup a 200 room hotel in Mumbai for which the land has been taken near the international airport. Other projects include a 100 room hotel over 4.5 acre in Alibaug, another 100 rooms in Goa and the group claims its Bangalore hotel is nearing completion and would be open by June 2008.

The hotel group would also be looking at budget hotel segment as well with its Pride Biznotel brand. However, Mr Jain said Pride Hotels would not own these properties and would rather go in for marketing or management contracts in various two-and three-tier cities.