Atul Ruia-promoted Phoenix Mills and Kishore Biyani’s Future group have started working on a retail-led mixed development project which is essentially self-contained townships. The projects in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai have already received funds from banks and financial institutions. Christened as Market Cities, the project has been originally promoted by Phoenix Mills and it has raised around Rs 1,000 crores in debt from various public and private sector banks, according to sources.

Atul Ruia, Director, Phoenix Mills, has informed that in two of the Market Cities, Future group’s overseas real estate fund Horizon has picked up equity while in the Chennai project, Future’s domestic fund Kshitij Investment has also bought equity stake.

Market Cities are in line with the concept of a city within city. A typical Market City has components such as hypermarkets, home stores, 7-8 departmental stores, entertainment, hotels, mall, commercial space and service apartments. Such projects are coming up as city-centric land parcels on lands measuring 15 acres to 25 acres.

Besides Future group, Phoenix Mills has also roped in HBS Realtors in the Mumbai and Bangalore projects as the third partner, while IL&FS has come in as a financial partner. In the Bangalore Market City project, private equity fund Edelweiss Capital has picked up a minority stake. The three promoters, Phoenix and Future group and HBS Realtors control over 51% equity shareholding in Mumbai and Bangalore Market City projects. .

Phoenix Mills, which pioneered the mill-to-mall revolution, intends to set up about 10 Market Cities across metros and relatively smaller retail format developments of about one million sq ft in tier- II cities. “We have around six Market City projects of which three are with Phoenix,” according to Shishir Baijal, CEO and managing director of Kshitij Future Capital Real Estate.