With slowdown hitting the real estate sector, land/property deals appear to be falling like ninepins. The latest deal to come unstuck is one involving the K Raheja Universal group and Lupin.
According toSources the negotiations between the two parties for part of Lupin’s land at Boisar in Tarapur and Thane district has fallen through primarily because of the existing insecurity in the real estate market.
While officials from K Raheja Universal did not respond to a media query on the deal, Lupin’s spokesperson, replying to an email questionnaire, said: “Lupin is an innovation-led transnational pharmaceutical company with no interest in real estate.”
Incidentally, Lupin had some years ago sold its Bandra Talkies property to a real estate developer. An analyst with a foreign brokerage house covering the firm said Lupin had, at one time, large tracts of land. “The real estate market then crashed. Slowly over the years, Lupin managed to sell most of its properties. It could well be considering the same now,” he said. Lupin has entered the league of the top five Indian pharmaceutical firms. The company hopes to be a $1 billion company by the end of the current financial year.
It is not just Lupin alone which have to bear brunt of the real estate downturn. Other deals which have hit the dirt in the recent past include Orbit Corporation’s deal for a six hundred crore rupees property with Kotak Realty Fund and Citra Developers and Rs 676-crore bid for the 134 crore Pal-Peugeot land at Dombivli-Kalyan.