Ambuja Neotia is one of the most prominent corporate houses headquartered in Kolkata, with its forte in real estate, hospitality, healthcare, and education under the leadership of Shri Harshavardhan Neotia. While the Group's reputation was first built on urban housing in Kolkata, its move into hospitality and leisure real estate began outside the city, on the banks of the Hooghly at Raichak. By 1989, Harshavardhan Neotia began to feel cramped in his existing scope of work and wanted to do bigger projects, deciding to move down the banks of the river Ganga in search of land for a hotel and a larger housing complex. The team made 50 visits to different sites before settling on a plot in Raichak, a Kolkata suburb, and it took four years to purchase the land because more than 400 people together owned those acres.
In hospitality, Ambuja Neotia's first major venture was Raichak on Ganges, where the Group set up a resort and country home complex on a sprawling 100 acres of land on the banks of the Ganges. The continuous evolution of that site by the Group has since transformed the pastoral hamlet of Raichak on Ganges into Eastern India's most versatile leisure destination. It remains the project that anchors the Group's identity outside Kolkata proper, predating its later expansion into townships at Siliguri, Raipur and Patna.
The development sits within a 100-acre integrated lifestyle project on the eastern bank of the Hooghly, roughly 51 km from Kolkata along the Diamond Harbour Road, just over an hour's drive away. Country Homes by Ambuja Neotia forms part of this 100-acre integrated lifestyle development at Raichak on Ganges. The land itself carries a layer of colonial history: the site's fort was built by the British East India Company in 1783 and, in the late nineties, was undertaken by the Carlton Group of Hotels together with the Bengal Ambuja Group and transformed into a resort.
Within the 100-acre estate, Ambuja Neotia has built out a portfolio of villa clusters aimed at second-home buyers rather than only overnight guests. Set amidst frangipani and lemon groves with a private lawn, Gardenia II is a cluster of premium country homes standing on 4 cottahs of land each, close to the city yet away from its hubbub. The wider Gardenia cluster spans plots from 4 to 30 cottahs, designed by architect Vivek Singh Rathore. Alongside Gardenia, the Group's Country Homes line-up includes Pakhiralaya, Vanya Awas, Hermitage, Riviera and Frangipani, plus the Ganga Kutir Residency villas, which are inspired by the neighbouring boutique hotel and resort.
Unit sizes and entry prices vary by cluster. Villas here come in a range from 2 cottah to 12 cottah land parcels, with prices starting from around Rs 40 lakh. At Ganga Kutir Residency specifically, the project offers 1 BHK, 2 BHK and 3 BHK villas across 790, 1,362 and 2,100 sq ft, priced from roughly Rs 41.51 lakh to Rs 1.10 crore. At Frangipani, villas spread across a 0.63-acre pocket run from 2,070 to 2,527 sq ft, with prices beginning at Rs 1.02 crore. Shared amenities across these clusters typically include a multi-cuisine restaurant, bar, clubhouse, swimming pool, spa, cycling and jogging areas, gym, garden and an outdoor promenade.
The residential clusters sit alongside, and draw their identity from, the hospitality assets the Group built first. The Ffort Raichak, by the Ganges, is positioned as a heritage retreat that blends fine luxury with the setting's natural surroundings. More recently, the Group extended its hospitality footprint here in partnership with IHCL. Taj Ganga Kutir Resort & Spa, set within the sprawling 100-acre estate, features 155 rooms and suites with a rustic charm and views of the Ganges. Harshavardhan Neotia described it as the fifth addition to the Kutir collection in Raichak, taking forward the Group's partnership with IHCL and its commitment to unlocking the region's tourism potential. The resort is positioned as a 2.5-hour scenic drive from Kolkata, with the town unfolding along the Ganges with fort-style architecture and riverside charm.
Raichak's connectivity is defined by road rather than rail. The drive from Kolkata runs down the Diamond Harbour Road from Behala in southern Kolkata to Sarisha in about 30 minutes, with a right turn just before Diamond Harbour and a further 5 km to Raichak. Depending on traffic and the exact route, total drive time from central Kolkata runs from a little over an hour to around 2.5 hours. A ferry service across the Ganges from the Raichak jetty or the Nurpur jetty is also popular among visitors to the area. For an Ambuja Neotia buyer, this positions Raichak as a genuine weekend-distance address rather than a daily commute suburb — closer in character to a second home than a primary residence.
Raichak is one node in a Bengal-wide footprint that stretches well beyond Kolkata's city limits. The Group describes West Bengal as its home ground, with five-star properties in the Sunderbans, Kolkata, Raichak, Santiniketan and Darjeeling. That scale has continued to grow: in 2024–25 the Group announced an investment plan of around Rs 15,000 crore, covering five new hospitals adding 1,300 beds in West Bengal and a luxury hotel circuit with Taj spanning roughly 600 rooms across Darjeeling, Digha and the Sundarbans, among other locations. Within that context, Raichak is not a one-off resort town for the Group but the original proof of concept for pairing hospitality with residential real estate on a single large landholding — a model it has since carried to other riverine and hill destinations across the state.
Demand for the Country Homes format is also tied to a broader shift in how buyers near large metros are using second homes. With the rise in demand for weekend residences near major cities, Raichak is fast becoming a desirable destination for those seeking more space, more green, and more quality of life. For a Kolkata-based buyer, that combination — an established 100-acre master-planned estate, a hospitality brand already running the resort next door, and villas priced from the Rs 40 lakh range upward — is the specific case Ambuja Neotia makes for Raichak over a generic riverside plot.