Despite having his hands full with the mega Bombay airport revamp, hotel tycoon G.V. Krishna Reddy is expanding his horizons with a projected increase in rooms. Taj has 430 additional rooms and 70 service apartments are on the tycoon's immediate agenda at an investment of Rs. 600 crore over the next two years. The two existing hotels in Hyderabad will meanwhile get revamped and the Taj Krishna will be developed into an integrated hotel complex with service apartments and 125 more rooms more by late 2008 even as the Taj Residency in Hyderabad gets geared up for a facelift and an additional 120 rooms. And the expansion does not stop just there. The magnate has further plans of taking Taj GVK to Bangalore and Chennai where he plans to set up two luxury five-star hotels. Clearly, focused on this city the tycoon's existing portfolio of hotels in Hyderabad will welcome yet another new five star hotel that will require an investment of approximately Rs 100 crore. The tycoon seems ready to beat competition as he casts a wide net catching all major southern cities. With a gateway to the west that he is busy constructing in Bombay right now.Higher Still Oriental Structural Engineers is a low-key company which construction tycoon K S Bakshi runs. But when at Rs 150 crore, Dabur scion Amit Burman recently acquired a 15 per cent stake in the company, OSE's burgeoning order book and performance shot into the limelight. The company's experience includes developing 39 airfields around the country and the very recent DND Expressway in a collaborative effort with Japanese firm Mitsui. Oriental has also done its bit for the Golden Quadrilateral highway project in difficult to work Bihar and UP too. The tycoon is slated for various projects in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the four laning of more highways in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. OSE, which has been around in the market for the last 35 years, has grown steadily and now is a company in the sexy area of infrastructure projects in hand for airfields, national and state highways in India and abroad, with a targeted turnover of $225 million. The company has gained the reputation of not just completing all infrastructure work on schedule but sometimes before it. It remains to be seen how Amit uses his position as Director to take the growing company to greater success further afield.
