Yesterday, after market hours, Sobha announced that it plans to foray into Gujarat.

It has proposed to make an investment of over Rs.500 crore towards residential deve lopment in Gujarat International Finance Tee-City (GfFT City), India's I st Operational Smart City and International Financial Services Centre (IFSC).

With this, Sobha will increase its residential footprint to 10 cities in India.

With a total built up area of 1.3 million square feet, Sobha will develop close to 1000 housing units in the fully-integrated city built on the walk-to-work concept. This investment is in line with Sobha's focus on developing affordable housing projects in major cities across the country.

The Company currently has ongoing real estate projects aggregating to 41.37 million square feet of developable area and 28.48 million square feet of saleable area, and ongoing contractual projects aggregating to 7.17 million square feet under various stages of construction. Currently, the Company has a real estate presence in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Chennai, Pune, Coimbatore, Thrissur, Kozhikode, Cochin and Mysore.

Following this news, the stock price rose in the opening bell session to Rs.567.15, up over 3%. Since then profit booking came in and it is now at Rs.552 levels.