Maytas Properties hunting hard for Hill County funds

Struggling to hang on to at least some of its projects, scam-tainted Maytas Properties, one of the firms promoted by the family of Ramalinga Raju, the jailed founder of Satyam Computer Services, is scouting for strategic partners to infuse Rs 100-150 crore required to complete its the Hill County housing project.

Maytas Properties, one of the two companies that the senior Raju had made an abortive bid to acquire in December last year, ran into problems after it failed to keep its promise of delivering the homes in Rs1,100-crore project, at Bachupally on the outskirts of Hyderabad, in March 2008. Hill County proposed to build 840 apartments and 326 independent bungalows, to be priced between Rs50 lakh and Rs2.5 crore.

Some customers have already filed a police complaint against the promoters, specifically Ramalinga Raju's son Rama Raju. At the same time, the company has approached some of its buyers - many of them software professionals, NRIs and entrepreneurs - to use their influence to find investors like venture capitalists and other funding bodies.

Top officials of the company met some of the members last week and

offered to give unencumbered collateral to the prospective investors, with the flexibility to withdraw the money invested in a year and sell some property at rates much lower than the prevailing market rates. The prospective investors could liquidate the collateral if the company did not repay.

The company has also expressed willingness to provide additional tangible resources like inventory, receivables and other promoter assets as collateral to interested developers.