NRI
co-founder of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia's new city outside Chandigarh
"Parsvnath
Nano City."
Haryana
has witnessed an unprecedented flow of NRI investment
New Delhi , Aug 14, 2008
Col. Ashok Mehta
NRI Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, Parsvnath Developers
and the Haryana Government has announced to develop an 11,138
acres knowledge city with the total project cost of Rs 50,000
crore. The name of the city will be "Parsvnath Nano City."
- Sabeer Bhatia, who promoted the project, holds the majority
stake of 52 per cent.
- The Haryana Govern- ment holds a 10 per cent stake.
- Parsvnath Developers has picked up 38 per - Parsvnath Developers
will initially invest Rs.400 crore.
The city will be equipped with a self-sufficient airport, golf
course, mass rapid transit system of its own, the proposed city
is touted as a regional and international hub for education, business
and technology.
Pradeep Jain chairman and managing director of Parsvnath Developers
will be the managing director of the company and Bhatia will be
the chairman of the company according to the agreement.
Pradeep Jain said, “To be developed in Panchkula, the project
would be completed in two phases over the next 10 years, where
the company would develop 5,000 acres in the first phase and we
have already acquired about 1,500 acres and are talking to various
land owners for acquiring the rest,”
Idea came in 2006 when he was watching a cricket match in India
with a government official from Punjab, pitching a plan to bring
premier U.S. educational departments in science and technology
to Indian universities. He returned to the United States, having
agreed to write a proposal. But he considered the conversation
the kind of casual banter one has at a sporting event, something
not to be taken too seriously. Later on, Sabeer's cousin Naval
Bhatia, an attorney, mentioned the conversation to a friend, an
official in nearby Haryana.
The Haryana official told Naval Bhatia, "Why should
Punjab get him? We want to offer him even more."
Bhatia said, "The education in India, until the undergrad
level, is pretty good, but when it comes to grad school, it just
falls off the cliff in terms of quality."
Read below in details
S.F.
tech mogul wants to build city in India How to build a city sustainably
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, August 11, 2008
A few days after his 29th birthday, Sabeer Bhatia sold Hotmail,
the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $400 million. Selling
the Web-based e-mail service bought him a swank Pacific Heights
condo with a panoramic view, buzz as the next hot Silicon Valley
player, boldfaced name recognition in the Indian press - and eventually,
one incredibly unchallenging year off playing golf and jet-set
partying.
He became haunted by the question common to those who find wild
success at a preternaturally young age: Now what?
Granted, over the past decade, Bhatia has had his hand in several
technology startups and post-startups both here and in India,
some mildly successful, some not. But his latest project is one
that comes from the heart: He is trying to develop an Indian version
of Silicon Valley, a sustainable city spread over 11,000 acres
in northern India that he envisions will be home to 1 million
residents employed largely by world-class universities and A-list
companies that act as the country's idea generators. He calls
it Nano City.
One problem: Until recently, Bhatia knew nothing about developing
cities. The 39-year-old San Francisco resident is an electrical
engineer by training and profession. And with a ton of cash in
the bank, the last challenge he thought he would face is the hassle
of navigating India's cash-under-the-table democracy, while preaching
sustainable development. India, with a population of 1.12 billion,
is beset with energy and infrastructure problems; most citizens
don't have access to safe drinking water.
Major developer
But now - after spending $4 million of his own money and learning
some hard lessons about international development - Bhatia's project
could be on the brink of starting. This summer, he partnered with
a major Indian developer that pledged funds to help purchase the
land needed in the northern Indian state of Haryana to break ground
on Nano City.
But major hurdles remain, and the project could easily fail.
Bhatia wasn't thinking about urban development when the idea
for Nano City first surfaced in March 2006. He was watching a
cricket match in India with a government official from Punjab,
pitching a plan to bring premier U.S. educational departments
in science and technology to Indian universities.
"The education over there, until the undergrad level, is
pretty good," said Bhatia, who attended Indian schools before
receiving an undergraduate scholarship to the California Institute
of Technology and earning a master's degree in electrical engineering
from Stanford University. "But when it comes to grad school,
it just falls off the cliff in terms of quality."
The official asked what he needed to get the project done. Bhatia
casually told the official that he could lure A-list U.S. universities
to the area if the government provided land and financial incentives.
A few days later, Bhatia returned to the United States, having
agreed to write a proposal. But he considered the conversation
the kind of casual banter one has at a sporting event, something
not to be taken too seriously - until Naval Bhatia, Sabeer's cousin
and an attorney, mentioned the conversation to a friend, an official
in nearby Haryana.
The Haryana official told Naval Bhatia, "Why should Punjab
get him? We want to offer him even more."
"It's a common occurrence, especially in developing countries,"
said Seshan Rammohan, executive director of the Silicon Valley
chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs, an international organization
of Indian and other South Asian entrepreneurs. "When someone
gets some notoriety, as Sabeer did after selling Hotmail, they
get bombarded with offers.
"If someone like Sabeer is attached to a project, then the
thinking is: Other people will want to invest," Rammohan
said.
Within days, Bhatia returned to India to speak with the Haryana
officials. They discussed an 11,000-acre spot about 15 miles east
of Chandigarh, Bhatia's birthplace and one of the few planned
cities in India.
Not another Bangalore
The idea of an Indian Silicon Valley began to resonate with Bhatia.
He didn't want to create another Bangalore, the traffic-tangled,
booming thicket of a city where he had grown up, best known for
its outsourcing operations for American companies. He wanted a
place where Indian-germinated ideas could flourish and where young
Indian students could receive a first-rate education.
In pursuing the Nano City project, Bhatia found the answer to
the question, "Now what?" If it succeeded, he could
make millions of dollars more. "But my reason for doing this
is to leave behind a legacy," Bhatia said.
"How many times in our lives do we get a chance to build
a city?" he said. "How many times do we get an opportunity
to fix some of the problems that affect 1.1 billion people - that's
one-sixth of humanity."
Bhatia is aware that planned cities often fail. To avoid pitfalls,
he intends to involve "the right partners, do proper design,
provide basic things that you and I take for granted here."
Atypical entrepreneur
Before calling in the bulldozers and cranes, Bhatia boned up on
development. He ordered dozens of books on Amazon.com and picked
the brains of Stanford professors, real estate developers, even
the guy who renovated his apartment.
"Why not?" Bhatia said. "He was a guy in the construction
business."
That summer, his assistant set up a meeting with several UC Berkeley
professors. The professors had met Bhatia's type before.
"A lot of these rich entrepreneurs come to us, thinking
they have all the answers," said Nezar AlSayyad, a professor
of architecture, city planning and urban design at UC Berkeley
who has been involved in projects around the world. "I expected
him to be like that."
AlSayyad grilled Bhatia during their first meeting, asking for
specifics and trying to ferret out his motivations. The professor
silently shuddered when Bhatia mentioned he liked Santana Row,
the San Jose development that is one of the few spots in Silicon
Valley that tries to create a public square with a mix of retail
and housing. AlSayyad thinks it is part of suburban sprawl.
Nonetheless, AlSayyad came away impressed with Bhatia, and for
one simple reason. "He listened. And he asked questions."
Social, financial impact
In early 2007, Bhatia flew nearly two dozen students and faculty
to the proposed site in India, where for nine days they met with
local officials and residents, and studied the topography of the
site. Over the summer, the group explored green ideas, such as
ensuring that a public park was within a five-minute walk of any
point in the city and how best to create efficient mass transit.
"Sabeer really pushed these ideas of sustainability,"
said Stefan Al, lead designer of the project. "A lot of these
ideas have been tried before, but not all together in one place."
In addition to contributing design ideas, the students challenged
Bhatia with questions about Nano City's social and financial impact.
They posed one particularly challenging question in the developing
world: What will happen to the people who live in the roughly
two dozen villages where Nano City would be built?
Many belong to families who have lived on small plots for more
than 100 years. In May, 71-year-old Karam Singh, a farmer who
owns 25 acres near the proposed project site, told the Indian
Express, "Even my great grandfather was born here. How can
I sell this land?"
Land prices in the area have quadrupled since the project was
announced, and currently stand at about $50,000 an acre. Rafiq
Dossani, senior research scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific
Research Center at Stanford University, believes land acquisition
from villagers will pose the biggest problem.
"The state leaves it to the businessperson to negotiate
his way through the thicket of corruption and lack of information
that typically surrounds land records in rural areas," Dossani
said. "A piece of agricultural land will often have multiple
claimants, indebtedness and prior claims over the generations."
Mt. Everest challenges
Last fall, Bhatia began purchasing the land, a few acres at a
time. After acquiring about 50 acres, he found that "every
subsequent acre of land we were buying was more expensive than
the previous one," he said. In November, he stopped the process
and hired four attorneys to research who owns every plot.
Meanwhile, he was having trouble raising money. Nobody wanted
to invest. The name "Sabeer Bhatia" opened some doors,
but he was repeatedly told he lacked sufficient real estate development
experience.
Last month, Parsvnath Developers Ltd., an Indian development
firm with experience in land acquisition, agreed to pick up a
38 percent equity stake in the project. The move, Bhatia said,
will enable him to break ground on Nano City early next year and
develop its first 1,000 acres.
Bhatia plans to offer free university education to the children
of landowners. "We think that over 95 percent of all the
farmers actually want to sell," he said. "We think this
will put pressure on that remaining 5 percent of people who are
maybe greedy for more money."
If they don't sell, Bhatia said, "We are ready to walk away.
... You can't build a city around a farm."
If he does succeed, then the hard part comes: developing Nano
City in an environmentally sustainable way in a rapidly growing
country. "This is not Sabeer climbing Mount Everest,"
said entrepreneur group leader Rammohan. "It's Sabeer climbing
Mount Everest with the city of San Francisco on his back."
India facts
Although India occupies only 2.4 percent of the world's land area,
it supports over 15 percent of the world's population. India's
median age is 25, one of the youngest among large economies. About
70 percent of the population lives in more than 550,000 villages,
and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities.
Population: 1.12 billion, 27.8 percent living in cities; annual
growth rate: 1.3 percent.
Workforce: 450 million; agriculture - 60 percent; service and
government - 22 percent; industry and commerce - 18 percent.
Literacy: 61 percent.
Gross Domestic Product (2007): $1 trillion.
Real growth rate (2006-2007): 9.4 percent.
Per-capita GDP (2006-2007): $909.
Trade: Exports (2006-2007): $127 billion, $22 billion of which
are software exports.
Major trade partners: United States, China, EU, Russia, Japan.
Source: U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of South and Central Asian
Affairs (June 2008)
Nano City's green features
Sabeer Bhatia intends to incorporate green and sustainable building
practices into Nano City's design - a rarity in India, where availability
of power and water is inconsistent. Stefan Al, the Berkeley-based
lead designer of the first phase of the Nano City, is planning
the following features:
-- Fifty percent park and open green space, with only local,
self-sustainable vegetation planted in landscaped areas. A park
will be less than a five-minute walk from any starting point in
the city.
-- Shaded walkways, arcades and tree-lined boulevards to encourage
walking.
-- A rapid bus-transport system, where buses will travel in dedicated
lanes.
-- Living machines, such as surface-water treatment plants that
convert wastewater into chemical and odor-free drinking water
by using algae, plants, bacteria and micro-organisms.
-- Power generated by windmills and photovoltaic technologies.
-- Green roofs that capture rainwater.
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/08/11/MN9S120S1G.DTL
