Sahara Group is ready to come up with its real estate investments. The group had launched Sahara City Homes project with a lot of fanfare two years ago. As being bullish on to make a substantial niche in property market, the group is pondering over to start on journey with township projects in cities including Lucknow, Indore, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, and Gwalior.

The group is expected to invest handsome amounts to acquire fresh projects, while the five existing ones in development phase would largely get funded through sales. The group claims to have a land bank of over 12,000 acres, which is believed to have spread over 110 cities.

Talking about the group’s Lucknow project, it is to come over a large area of 200 acres. The project will begin in the next month, with the remaining four likely to go on stream before 2008. The airline business of Sahara Group will not put any hindrance for the group’s real estate business, says a senior official.

Sahara has some aggressive plans to make its foray into real estate industry a huge success. By releasing hard norms for the real estate industry, the RBI is making it harder for builders to raise debt finance through banks for land acquisition and for the development purpose.