Cocoa County, Sector 88A: what the RERA file shows, and the insolvency the promoter came out of

The short version

A new name on an old colony, from a company that went through insolvency

Haryana RERA's Gurugram bench registered three projects called Cocoa County Phase 02, 03 and 04 in Sector 88A on 11 September 2026. The certificates are numbers 58, 59 and 60 of 2026, and the state registrations are RERA-GRG-2239-2026, RERA-GRG-2270-2026 and RERA-GRG-2271-2026. They went up on the regulator's portal on 7 October. That is why this launch is only now appearing in the public register, a month after the press coverage. Together the three phases cover 844 apartments in nine towers, plus a small shopping block, on 17.26 acres of a 24.125-acre licensed colony.

The marketing calls it County Group's Gurugram debut. The file tells a longer story. The promoter of record is Ashiana Landcraft Realty Private Limited. This is the same company that launched The Centre Court on this land in 2014, the "sports residences" project that became Phase 1 of the colony. Ashiana Landcraft fell behind on its debt in 2019. CARE Ratings has rated its instruments in default since then, and still did in April 2026. An insolvency petition was admitted against it at the National Company Law Tribunal in Kolkata on 11 January 2022. On 11 August 2023 the tribunal approved a resolution plan from IV County Private Limited. Ashiana Landcraft's own letter to HARERA says that order handed over management of the project. The company now files from County Group's office in Noida, lists countygroup.in as its website, and County Group sells the project.

So Cocoa County is not a fresh company on fresh land. It is a stalled project that has been rescued, with its unbuilt two-thirds now relaunched under a new name. The resolution plan itself asked for a change of project name "to detach brand negativity associated currently to the Project". There is good news in this as well as caution. The new owner did finish Phase 1. DTCP granted its occupation certificate on 12 August 2025, and HARERA's inspection on 3 September 2026 found "allottees are residing in their units". That handover came about seven years after the date in a 2014 buyer agreement, and about five years after the completion date in the 2017 RERA registration.

Name check

Not Ashiana Housing, and not Coco County

Two name traps matter before anything else. Ashiana Landcraft Realty is not Ashiana Housing Limited, the listed senior-living developer. CARE's rationale describes Ashiana Landcraft as a joint venture of Ashiana Homes Private Limited (a Ghaziabad group) and Landcraft Projects Private Limited, set up for The Centre Court alone. The clearest proof is in the NCLT order itself. Ashiana Housing Limited appears there as one of four bidders for the insolvent company, and it dropped out without submitting a revised plan. If a broker says "Ashiana" to suggest the listed company's track record, that is wrong.

The second trap is closer to home. County Group already has a delivered project called Coco County in Greater Noida. Cocoa County in Gurugram is a different project, and anything you read about Coco County's handover says nothing about this one.

The company's identity has also shifted on paper. The Phase 1 filing of 2020 used a Kolkata-registered company number (U70200WB2012PTC173601), the spelling "Ashaina", and three directors, none of whom appear now. The 2026 filings use a Noida number (U70200UP2012PTC242093) and County Group directors, led by managing director Amit Modi. The PAN suffix is the same in both, which suggests it is one company that moved after the takeover. That is our reading; it is worth confirming on the MCA portal. Part G of all three new forms, "projects launched in the last five years", says "No Projects". That is technically true for this company, and it tells you nothing about County Group's record. We cover that record below.

The file

A Rs 1.59 crore late fee, six approvals still to come, and a condition about the old promoters

Start with the money HARERA charged at the door. Phase 2 paid Rs 2,06,50,219 in fees, against Rs 12.3 lakh for Phase 3 and Rs 5.3 lakh for Phase 4. Most of the gap is a late fee of Rs 1,58,58,584, 800 per cent of a base fee of Rs 19,82,323. The hearing order of 31 August gives the reason. Building plans for both licences were approved in 2014 and 2015, and no completion certificate was ever issued, so the whole colony was an "ongoing project" when the RERA Act took effect in 2017. Only Phase 1 was registered. HARERA charged the late fee once, on the entire unregistered area, and said it "shall be paid by the erstwhile promoter/promoter". In plain terms, the colony should have been on the register nine years ago, and the new owner has paid the penalty for the old one's omission.

Next, the registration is conditional, like several Gurugram registrations this year. At approval on 7 September, six permissions had not been obtained: environment clearance, the fire scheme, service plans and estimates, the electrification plan, road access permission and mining permission. The promoter undertook to file the first three within six months. Each phase gave three bank guarantees of Rs 25 lakh, nine in all, worth Rs 2.25 crore, and they are forfeited if those approvals miss the deadline, which falls around 11 March 2027. The electrification plan and road access permission are also due within six months. Mining permission, which covers basement excavation, is needed before construction starts. Every internal service estimate in Form REP-I is marked "yet to be prepared", and none of the external connections (roads, water, sewerage and storm drainage from GMDA, power from DHBVN) is shown as approved.

The third point is about earlier sales. HARERA asked for a notarised affidavit from the managing director of the "erstwhile promoters", stating that no booking, sale or third-party right had been created in the unregistered area. According to the 7 September order, that affidavit was "Not submitted". Instead the new promoter swore that it would be responsible for any such claim, and the registration certificate carries that as a condition. It requires the promoter to protect the rights of anyone holding a booking from the old promoter. A separate condition requires it "to clear the title of the project land from any litigations before the offer of possession". Neither condition means a problem exists. Both mean the Authority could not rule one out, and put the risk on the promoter.

Two more details from the hearings matter to anyone already living in Phase 1. The revised building plans needed consent from two-thirds of the existing buyers. The record shows 406 allottees (389 unique), and written consent from 279 of them, about 69 per cent. Twelve objections were filed, which DTCP found "not related to revision of building plans". Every hearing brief also lists pending proceedings against the project as "N/A". Yet the Phase 1 entry on the register links to six HARERA monitoring cases, two of them still marked pending.

Site and units

Nine towers wrapped around a finished Phase 1, and every flat a corner flat

The colony is an irregular 24.125-acre parcel made up of two 2013 licences, 42 of 2013 (10.10 acres) and 46 of 2013 (14.025 acres). It is planned under Haryana's transit-oriented development policy, so part of it gets 250 per cent FAR and part 175 per cent. The phasing plan (DTCP drawing 12415, dated 27 July 2026) shows the layout clearly. The four built Phase 1 towers and Club Mocha sit in the south centre, with the EWS block in the south-east corner. Phase 2 wraps around them on the north and east: towers D1, D2 and D3 in a row along the north, C3 and C2 on the east side, C1 at the south-east, and a new clubhouse in the middle. Phase 4 is a single tower, B2, in the north-west pocket. Phase 3 is towers A and B1, plus the shops, on an L-shaped arm that runs south-west to the old PWD road. That arm is also where the sales office stands.

The towers are tall and the flats are large. Towers C and D are two basements, a stilt and 28 floors, with four flats on each floor. Towers A and B are 29 and 28 floors with two flats per floor. Tower A's section puts its terrace at 113 metres, under the 130-metre height limit in the two airport clearances on file. Carpet areas run from 1,299 to 2,688 square feet. Most homes are of two types: 324 flats of 1,785 square feet (type C1) and 304 of 1,467 square feet (type D2). Those figures come from the approved carpet-area sheet. Form REP-I splits Phase 2's 672 flats differently, giving 302 flats of the 1,497-square-foot type, where the sheet gives 20. Ask which sheet your unit is counted on.

The typical floor of a Tower C is a plus-shaped plate with a flat in each corner. So every flat gets windows on two sides and its own 1.8-metre balconies. Each flat has two master bedrooms of about 3.3 by 5.3 metres, each with its own toilet, two more bedrooms, a living-dining room of 6.76 by 4.27 metres, a kitchen, a utility room with a servant's WC, and a store. The core has four lifts and two staircases serving the four flats. Refuge floors interrupt the stack at the 17th and 26th levels. The specification in Form REP-I Part H lists imported marble in living areas and kitchens, laminated wood in bedrooms, split air-conditioners in every bedroom and the living and dining rooms, and a modular kitchen.

Parking is generous on paper. The site plan provides space for 2,808 cars in all, against a requirement of 1,806 equivalent car spaces for the whole colony. One planning condition is unusual and worth knowing about. The building plans use an extra 12 per cent FAR granted for a provisional IGBC Gold green rating. The approval letter says occupation will be withheld for "three times the area of additional FAR" until the final rating comes through. If the final rating is delayed, some flats could wait for their occupation certificate. Ask whether yours is one of them.

Access

Three gates on paper, one built road today

This is the part of the file that brokers will not volunteer. On the key plan, the colony has three entries. One is in the north, through a narrow arm to a 24-metre road. One is in the east, through a short strip to another 24-metre road. The third is in the south-west, at the tip of the Phase 3 arm, where it meets the existing PWD road and the 12-metre service road of the 60-metre sector road. The proposed 75-metre road to the south is not on the colony's boundary. Other properties sit between them.

What exists today is described in the Authority's own brief. Access is "from existing PWD road/12 mtr wide service road developed which further connected to Gurgaon-Pataudi Road". The road access permission was applied for on 2 September 2026 and has not been granted. Whether the 24-metre sector roads to the north and east are built is not stated anywhere in the file. Until they are, the working entrance is through the south-west arm. That puts the daily traffic of 844 new households, plus Phase 1's 476 flats and the EWS block, on the old PWD road and the service road.

Revenue rastas, old village paths that stay public by law, also cross the scheme. A 3-karam rasta (about 5 metres) runs north to south between Phase 2 and Phases 4 and 1, and a 2-karam rasta runs along the north edge. The building approval's condition 7 says any revenue rasta through the site "shall be kept unobstructed". Ask how the gated layout deals with that.

For distances, we ran a free-flow route from the site, with no traffic, so treat these as the best case. Rajiv Chowk on NH-48 is about 10 km, IMT Manesar about 10 km, Medanta in Sector 38 about 14 km, IFFCO Chowk about 16 km, Cyber City about 28 km by the Dwarka Expressway, and IGI Terminal 3 about 30 km. The Dwarka Expressway runs along the eastern side of Sector 88A. The zoning plan measures the site's FAR bands as 500 and 800 metres from a 150-metre road. By our reading that is the expressway corridor, which would put it several hundred metres east of the colony. Garhi Harsaru railway station is about 3 km away.

There is no metro. The nearest operating stations are Millennium City Centre on the Yellow Line, about 16 km by road, and Dwarka Sector 21, about 20 km. The Gurugram Metro under construction includes a spur from Basai to Sector 101, about 7 km from the site by road. The Tribune reported in September 2025 that its target is December 2028.

Neighbourhood

A half-built pocket, with water as the open question

Sector 88A is partly lived-in and partly empty land. Godrej Oasis and Godrej Icon in Sectors 88A and 89A began handing over in 2019 and 2020, according to HARERA complaint orders and property listings. The Centre Court's own residents are now inside this colony. Large licensed parcels, including two-thirds of this one, are still unbuilt. The nearest multispecialty hospital is SilverStreak in Sector 87, about 2 to 3 km away by our estimate. Tertiary care means Medanta, about 15 minutes in clear traffic. The nearest mall is in Sector 37C, about 4 km. Schools listed by portals as nearby are unverified, and the developer's own claim is "3 km".

Water deserves a direct question. The hearing record says the promoter has a water connection and a sewerage assurance "for 14 acres licensed land", and has told HARERA these "shall cater the requirement for complete license area". That is the promoter's statement, not an authority's. More broadly, The Tribune reported in December 2024 that GMDA's treatment plants supplied about 570 MLD against a summer demand of about 700 MLD, with the shortfall falling on the newer sectors. In June 2024 it reported more than 200 Dwarka Expressway societies depending on water tankers. Gurugram's groundwater is classed as over-exploited, and construction is not allowed to use it. On drainage, we found no flooding report specific to Sector 88A. The corridor's underpasses and the airport tunnel flooded in August and September 2026. On 7 October 2026 The Tribune reported that the Chief Minister's Office had asked for status reports on Gurugram's long-delayed drainage works.

For prices, the official reference is the 2026-27 collector rate for Sub-Tehsil Harsaru. It puts flats in licensed group housing colonies in Sectors 88, 88A, 89 and 89A at Rs 7,000 per square foot, up from Rs 6,500 last year. 99acres shows Sector 88A resale asking prices of about Rs 13,100 per square foot for April to June 2026; these are asking prices, not sales. Portals quote Cocoa County at about Rs 16,000 per square foot on super area, but no price appears anywhere in the HARERA file. Treat that figure as marketing.

Amenities

One club built, one club on paper

Club Mocha, the Phase 1 clubhouse with its outdoor pool, already exists and is in use. The new Community Building 02 in Phase 2 is planned as ground plus two floors. Its drawings show function halls, a fine-dining space, a multipurpose hall of about 19 by 22 metres, an indoor water feature, a wellness centre, a sports hall and pool changing rooms. A third community building is marked as a mandir. The building approval says all three community buildings are common areas that "shall not be sold".

The money

Rs 2,492 crore of cost, Rs 650 crore of bank debt, and no payment plan in the file

The three phases declare a combined cost of Rs 2,492.23 crore. Construction is Rs 1,192.45 crore (48 per cent), infrastructure Rs 469.72 crore (19 per cent), "other costs including EDC, taxes, levies" Rs 476.65 crore (19 per cent), and land Rs 353.41 crore (14 per cent). On 139,373 square metres of flat carpet area, that is about Rs 16,600 per square foot of carpet. That is the promoter's declared cost, not a selling price. The chartered accountant's certificate for Phase 2 shows Rs 162.33 crore spent by 27 July 2026: land Rs 117.05 crore, external development charges Rs 42.05 crore and infrastructure development charges Rs 3.23 crore. Nothing had yet been spent on construction. HARERA recorded the promoter's statement that EDC "has already been fully paid".

The sworn REP-II declaration of 1 September 2026 discloses the financing. IndusInd Bank sanctioned credit facilities of Rs 650 crore on 31 December 2025. A first-ranking equitable mortgage has been created over 7.906 acres and 10.10 acres in Sector 88A, along with a first charge on the development rights of Cocoa County, in favour of IDBI Trusteeship as security trustee. The tehsil's non-encumbrance report of 5 June 2026 shows no mortgage entry in the land record. That is not necessarily a contradiction, because a mortgage made by depositing title deeds does not normally appear in the jamabandi. But it does mean the land record alone would not tell you about the loan. Construction finance is ordinary for a project this size. The point is that the land under your future tower secures the bank's loan, so check that your agreement and the bank's no-objection letter cover your unit.

One HARERA query was still open at approval: "Cost of the land needs to be clarified according to the area applied for the registration". It was marked "Not submitted". The declared land cost per acre differs across the phases: about Rs 22.9 crore in Phase 2, Rs 15.3 crore in Phase 3 and Rs 16.9 crore in Phase 4. The draft agreement in the file is HARERA's model form, and its payment-plan schedule is blank. No price, payment plan or preferential location charge appears in any of the three files. Under Section 13 of the RERA Act, the promoter cannot take more than 10 per cent of the price before a registered agreement for sale. Insist on a construction-linked plan tied to stages you can check against the quarterly progress reports. A time-linked plan on a project whose construction had not started in September 2026 shifts the waiting risk onto you.

The builder

A rescue that delivered, from a group whose record we could only partly check

The documented history of the promoter company is this. The Centre Court launched around December 2014. A buyer agreement from that year promised possession by 19 September 2018. In Complaint 2571 of 2019, decided on 19 December 2019, HARERA awarded that buyer delay interest at 10.20 per cent a year. Payments to lenders were delayed from March 2019, and CARE Ratings has kept the company's debt at "CARE D" ever since. At the tribunal, admitted claims came to Rs 1,228.6 crore. Homebuyers had Rs 383.2 crore of claims admitted, out of Rs 452.4 crore claimed. Secured lenders, including Piramal funds, India Housing Fund and PNB Housing Finance, had Rs 684 crore admitted. Under the approved plan, secured lenders were offered Rs 65 crore upfront plus Rs 10 crore. Homebuyers were promised completion of Phase 1 within twelve months of the plan taking effect (excluding approval time), with no price escalation and no downgrade in specifications.

The tribunal did not grant everything the plan asked for. It declined reliefs that fall within other authorities' powers, so it did not waive buyers' HARERA claims. In August 2025 the appellate tribunal dismissed an appeal by a group of debenture holders, who had already been paid under a separate settlement. The Phase 1 occupation certificate came on 12 August 2025, about two years after the plan's approval, against the plan's twelve-month promise. It covers four towers of 119 flats each, at G+29, and a 159-flat EWS block, with a composition fee of Rs 68,385 "on account of violations committed".

County Group is the rebranded ABA Corp of Noida, behind Cleo County, Olive County, Orange County and Cherry County. Press reports credited Cherry County as the first project in Greater Noida West to receive a full completion certificate, and the group says it delivered Coco County, Ivy County and County 107 in 2024. Amit Modi was president of CREDAI Western UP from 2022 to 2024. We found no insolvency petition or consumer-court order against County Group's own companies in our searches. We did not query the UP RERA complaints portal or Noida Authority's dues records directly, so that is "none found by us", not a clean bill.

The balance

What works, and what to watch

Do it yourself

Eight checks before you pay a booking amount

Verdict

A builder that finished a stalled project, now asking you to wait until 2032

Cocoa County is easy to misread in both directions. It is not a risky fly-by-night launch: the colony's first phase was rescued and handed over, the registrations are complete and public, and the lender and regulator both have money riding on the next six months. It is also not a fresh project from a spotless company. The promoter entity defaulted, went through insolvency, and is still rated in default. The new phases start with six approvals outstanding, no payment plan on file, a mortgage on the land, and only an old road for access today. Completion is filed for the end of 2032.

This is right for buyers who want a large three- or four-bedroom flat in a colony whose first phase they can visit and talk to residents of. It suits someone who can wait six years and will insist on a construction-linked plan. It is not right for anyone who needs possession before about 2032, who needs a metro nearby, or who is not comfortable with a promoter company that has a default history, whatever its new owners have since delivered. Whichever group you are in, the guarantee deadline in March 2027 is the first real test of whether this timeline holds.

If you are evaluating a purchase in these markets, Akhut Estates advises buyers directly: akhut.in/contact.