Business partners and brothers, Balwant and Santokh Chawla, who run the amusement park company Polo group, are gung-ho about their business expansion plans.

After launching the country's first snow theme park at their Fun 'n' Food Village in Delhi, they plan to set up amusement parks in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) and Pattaya (Thailand).

While the Tashkent project is a joint venture with a local construction company, Pattaya's entertainment park will be wholly owned by the Polo group.

Work at the Rs 15 crore (Rs 150 million) Tashkent and Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million) Pattaya project is expected to begin next month and will take roughly nine months to complete.

"The major attraction in both these amusement parks will be snow and water theme," says company director Santokh Chawla.

"Besides slides and other activities in shallow pools, there will be an ice rink for skating and a snow slope for skiing and tobogganing," he adds.

The company hopes to cater to 10,00,000 visitors a year in Pattaya and slightly less that number in Tashkent. The company's amusement parks in Delhi and Nagpur clock about 500,000 visitors each annually.

However, this is not the first time that the Polo group is attempting to venture outside India. Sometime back it tried setting up an amusement park in Gold Coast, Australia.

Though Polo MD Balwant Chawla does not wish to share details, sources in the company say that the project faced opposition from the (Australian) government agencies as well as a popular global entertainment giant.

"But in both Tashkent and Pattaya we're on a surer ground," says he. Back home, Polo plans to transform its Fun 'n' Food Village into an entertainment zone for the entire family. The restaurant in the complex is being redone, while two more are being set up.

All three restaurants will have bars. The idea to is turn it into a 'night spot' to compete with malls, multiplexes and other entertainment zones.