Government-owned National Textile Corporation (NTC) on Thursday launched the country's biggest-ever land e-auction (sale of land through online bidding) of Poddar Mill, its 2.4 acre mill in Worli Naka in Mumbai. NTC has set a reserve price of Rs 250
crore for the property for which eight real estate firms will bid over the next three days.
By the end of the day, the firm had received nine hits with the highest bid at Rs 280 crore.
"The adoption of the e-auction process was to bring in transparency in the process of land sale of the closed mills of NTC," Textile Minister Dayanidhi Maran told HT.
"This is the first-ever initiative by any government company to sell land by e-auction process and it will set an example for all of them to emulate this process."
"We will declare the starting price which will be visible to all the participants during the start of the auction," NTC Chairman K. Ramachandran Pillai told HT.
"Any bidder can start bidding from the start price and the next bid will have to be higher by at least Rs 2 crore. All bidders would have a valid digital certificate well in advance to participate in the online event."
Following the sale of Poddar Mill, NTC will also sell its 8.4 acre Bharat Textile Mill land in Worli through the same process in August 4-6. The PSU hopes to rake in at least Rs 750 crore through it. Seven real estate companies have been shortlisted for the bidding.
NTC has drawn a roadmap to generate at least Rs 5,000 crore during the current financial year, the bulk of which will come by selling properties in Mumbai where it has six more mills with a total land area of 55 acre.
It will also sell a few smaller properties in Indore, Kanpur, Bangalore and Coimbatore.
The PSU's revival plan, which is expected to be complete by March 2011, was kick started in 2005 when it sold 5 mills in Mumbai generating Rs 2,200 crore.