HOW DB REALTY BOUNCED BACK AS VALOR ESTATE

Once written off, the company is raking in millions and counts India's biggest developers among its partners

- Madhurima Nandy

Worli, India's hottest property micro-market today, where apartments sell at over ₹1 lakh a square foot, will soon see a mega slum redevelopment project. The 17-acre land parcel will have a Waldorf Astoria hotel and branded residences, a second hotel under the Hilton brand, two high-end residential towers, office and retail space. It will also rehabilitate 4,000 families that occupied the land.

At the helm of the ambitious, 4.5 million sq. ft mixed-use development project, pegged to be south Mumbai's largest, are Prestige Group and Valor Estate Ltd. In its earlier avatar, the latter was known as DB Realty, a name that became infamous after the promoters got embroiled in the 2G spectrum scam case a decade and a half ago.

Like many slum rehabilitation projects in Mumbai that went cold due to the complexities involved, the Jijamata Nagar project in Worli, conceived nearly two decades ago, was stuck. DB Realty had stepped into the project around 2010 and was to jointly execute it with Lokhandwala Infrastructure. But it remained a nonstarter. With Bengaluru's Prestige buying out Lokhandwala's stake and coming in as an equal partner with Valor, the project is finally set to take off now.

In Mumbai, where building regulations and approvals are not easy to navigate, the partnership works well. Valor brings its strength in slum clearance and procuring approvals to the partnership, while Prestige brings development and execution bandwidth to the table.

After Valor Estate's promoters, Vinod Goenka and Shahid Balwa, were accused in the 2G telecom spectrum scam, the company faced a complete stoppage of its projects. Today, the real estate firm counts some of the country's largest developers as partners in prime projects. Armed with over 500 acres of land in a city known for its notoriously scarce land at skyhigh prices, and its expertise in slum redevelopment, the company slowly got back into the game.