Sanjay Ghodawat group will invest Rs 300 cr in a 160 acre educational campus

PUNE: Education is a growth sector and now the Jaysingpur-based, near Kolhapur, Sanjay Ghodawat Group of Industries,a gutka to wind power turbine maker, has announced plans to set up a Rs. 300 crore campus near Pune.

The campus, spread over 160 acres, off the Pune-Mumbai expressway, will house a residential school and colleges offering professional courses, ranging from engineering to management. Also on offer will be courses in design and animation, environment and green engineering, hotel management, law, Arts and Commerce, finance, foreign trade, mass communication, Information Technology and Bio-technology, according to a statement issued here.

The statement quoted group chairman, Sanjay Ghodawat, as saying that the expansion comes after a similar campus in Kolhapur has completed three years of operations. The 150 acre Kolhapur campus has over 2,000 students currently.

"We intend to create a campus near Pune of around 1.5 million square feet of constructed area with an estimated investment of Rs.300 crore, to accommodate over 10,000 students," Ghodawat said.

Construction on the proposed SGI campus in Pune is scheduled to start by March 2012 with the first phase expected to be ready by June 2013 and the entire campus by May 2015.

The Sanjay Ghodawat Group has a presence in the power, education, agriculture, chemicals, real estate and infrastructure, edible oil, packaging and marble mining sectors.