The Anil Ambani group-managed Reliance Energy and Bharat Hotels, the owner of the Grand Group of Hotels, have jointly presented bid for the development of the proposed international convention centre (ICC) in Bangalore, to be set up by the department of tourism, Karnataka.
The project, which envisages an investment of Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion), is coming up near the forthcoming international airport at Devanahalli, nearly 25 km from Bangalore city on public-private partnership basis. This is going to Karnataka's answer to the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) large convention centre developed by the Accor group, also in public-private partnetship basis.
Jagmohan Misra, vice-president-south, The Grand Ashok said, "We with Reliance Energy as joint partners, have presented the bid for the huge project. This involves setting up of a large convention centre of about 6000-people capacity and 3,000 hotel rooms."
Mishra said with an average investment of about Rs 50 lakh for each room, the investment for the hotel will be around Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion), apart from about Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) investment for the convention hall.
If selected, this will be one of the largest project ever taken up by the company. Recently, Bharat Hotels invested Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) on refurbishing the The Grand Ashok, its property in Bangalore.
The state tourism department had earlier invited bids for the state-of-the-art world-class convention centre, to meet the needs of both international as well as domestic business-cum-tourist clientele, suitable for large-scale meetings, conferences and performances.
The government has identified 35 acres of land for the project which will also house restaurants and food courts, business centres with money exchange facilities, ATMs and workspace, with wi-fi connectivity. The last date for the submission of application for the bid was August 4.
