New Delhi: Realty firm Parsvnath Developers Ltd is investing Rs400 crore ($93 million) as equity and debt for a 38% stake in Nano City Haryana Infrastructure Ltd, 52% owned by a group promoted by Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, the first widely used free email service in the world.

Acquiring stake: Parsvnath Developers’ chairman Pradeep Jain.

Nano City is building a 11,138-acre township in Panchkula near Chandigarh that seeks to model itself on California’s Silicon Valley. The state-owned Haryana State Industrial Development Corp. has 10% equity stake in the company.

Parsvnath’s equity infusion of Rs41.1 crore puts the equity capital of Nano City at Rs110 crore.

The proposed township will be developed in two phases over the next 10 years. In the first phase, the company expects to develop 5,000 acres, with the remaining 6,000 acres left for the second phase, said Parsvnath’s chairman Pradeep Jain.

The company has started buying land for the project. Around 1,500 acres have already been acquired, said Jain, and Nano City is in talks with various landowners to buy the rest. The developer expects to complete the process in six to nine months. The planned township would be divided into four districts called information technology, university, airport and biotechnology.

It will house knowledge industries centred around education and nano-technologies. Around 30% of the project area has been reserved for residences.

Nano City will invest Rs50,000 crore over 10 years in developing the project. The company will raise this money through a mix of debt, private equity funding and an initial public offering.