DLF To Make Fresh Investments To The Tune Of 5000 Crores In a Commercial Project

This project would tally the project total of 14 million sqft of development area in Chennai. This new project would be headed by the DLF commercial property subsidiary or the rental arm known as the DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd.

Delhi Land and Finance, popularly known as DLF Ltd is one of the largest commercial real estate developers in India. And in a recent move, it has been announced that they are planning for a commercial project to the tune of 5000 crores on a 27 acres of land in the Chennai’s Taramani area.

The project has been titled as the DLF Downtown and it will their 4^th major project in Chennai which will be undertaken jointly with Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO).

It is estimated that with this project, DLF would have an aggregate total of 14 million sqft of development in the southern city of Chennai and would become the second largest market next to Gurugram.

The project is set to be constructed in three different phases and it will be headed by the DLF’s commercial property subsidiary or rental arm DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd (DCCDL). The first phase will see a construction of around 2.5 million sqft and the rest will be continued in the other two phases.

“Chennai continues to strengthen its position as an IT/ITeS hub with increasing investment commitments from global companies, making it our second largest market after Gurugram. The company has identified a development pipeline of 20 million sqft and construction of 5.5 million square feet is underway. This will augment our existing 32 million sqft rental portfolio and we plan to take the national portfolio to over 50 million sqft once new projects are completed," said SriramKhattar, managing director, DLF Rental Business.

The residential business wing of DLF will be focusing on Delhi and its suburbs while the commercial wing is looking at a pan-India strategy to expand their rental office portfolio across the different metropolitan cities in India – Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. The estimated growth is set at 17-18 million sq.ft with the development of new projects including another “Downtown” in Haryana along with the investor partner GIC Pvt Ltd.

The rental arm of DLF, or the DCCDL is known for having a 94% occupancy rate in all their commercial assets. The DLF Cybercity in Manapakkam, Chennai has been present for the past 15 years and has now come to be termed as a large IT special economic zone (SEZ). The current annual rental revenue from DLF Cybercity is around 500 crores.

“...Once Phase 1 of DLF Downtown is completed and operational, our stabilized rental income from Chennai will be a substantial amount," saidKhattar.

Property Advisory JLL India pointed out that the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam belt held good promise for any real estate project in that line as it had a good connectivity with the airport and the rest of the Chennai complete with the presence of the information technology services corridor.