Neotia Elbit Healthciti

Among the property developers who have brought in a breath of fresh air to the city’s staid old concepts, Bengal Ambuja must rank at the top.

In the 90s, when EM Bypass was yet to be recognized as part of the city, Bengal Ambuja started large-format housing project where Santoshpur meets the Bypass. This was arguably the first such housing project in Kolkata.

Bengal Ambuja’s success paved the way for more similar projects, and today Kolkata is home to several big endeavors, some so big like Ciputra group’s West Kolkata International City (see here) that they can be easily comparable to the largest projects in India.

Bengal Ambuja also brought City Center, occupying an entire block in Salt Lake. Once City Center defined how a large shopping destination ought to be, many are following suit in exactly the same way.

Now we’re going to have the group’s second City Center in New Town, which promises to be bigger and even more exciting than the first one.

Blazing a trail, Bengal Ambuja is now embarking on a 1000-bed multi-speciality hospital close to Peerless Hospital off EM Bypass. It is called Neotia Elbit Healthciti, to be built at a total cost of $500 million in alliance with Israel’s NASDAQ-listed (EMITF) Elbit Medical Imaging Ltd.

The first phase at $230 million or Rs.1000 crore will be operational by 2010 with 500 beds.

The highpoint about the hospital – rather health-city – is that other than world-class state-of-the-art non-invasive treatment facilities of several ailments, it will have biotech research center offering stem cell therapy (see my post, India’s cord blood banking) and other support services like service apartments for patients’ families, alternative medical center, nurse training institute, medical mall (whatever that means), and to cap them all a heli-ambulance facility, everything in the same campus.

Like all its earlier ones, there is little doubt that Ambuja group’s this project too will be a grand success. That they do it with aplomb is fairly evident when the JV-signing ceremony is held at nowhere else but Writers’ Buildings in the august presence of Chief Minister and the Israeli ambassador to India, David Danieli, who said that this is the largest private investment by Israel in India.

Doing it with a bang, you bet!

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