Trouble in Elephant Country ; Rahul Sachitanand Visits the Work-in-Progress Bandipur Resort of a Tech-Entrepreneur to Find Out What It Is That has Got the Greens' Ire.

Business Today › April 24, 2006

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Summary

In late 2005, T.G. Ramesh (tiger is what he is called in Bangalore circles, an obvious play on his initials; he was the founder of tech hotshop Bangalore Labs) decided that eco-tourism and wilderness, not business process outsourcing and technology, would be his focus, and launched Wilderness Resorts. Initial funding of $10 million (Rs 45 crore) came his way from old friend and iGate CEO Phaneesh Murthy and brewery-owner H.B. Jairaj, and Ramesh announced that the company would initially start with three resorts in Karnataka (the chain is branded Cicada), and expand to over 50 across the country over five years.

Today, Wilderness has one resort up and running at Nagarhole, some 250 km south of Bangalore. Its second project, however, in the 874 sq. km Bandipur Sanctuary, part of the 5,500 sq. km Nilgiris Biosphere (home to 3,300 species of flowering plants and 100 species of mammals) has run into opposition from some environmentalists. The biosphere is home to over 6,000 elephants, "the single largest concentration of the Asiatic Elephant", according to R. Sukumar, Chairperson (Centre for Ecological Sciences), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India's foremost expert on the animal (he owns around 10 acres of land in the region), and they wander across its length and breadth, crossing between India's Eastern and Western Ghats through a corridor.

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Trouble in Elephant Country ; Rahul Sachitanand Visits the Work-in-Progress Bandipur Resort of a Tech-Entrepreneur to Find Out What It Is That has Got the Greens' Ire.

Cicada's new resort in Bandipur is perilously close to this corridor, allege some environmentalists. "This resort is very close to the elephant-proof trench (EPT)," says Anirudha Mookerjee, Director, Wildlife Trust of India. "Such resorts... should not be allowed to ...

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