The Noida City Centre terminal station on the Delhi Metro’s Blue Line has now been rechristened ‘Wave City Centre Noida’.

This is the first of the nine stations that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had decided to put up for branding in order to boost its revenue generation.

The renaming of the station has been done after the DMRC invited bids from private companies last year.

In April this year, real estate company Wave Infratech won the bid for Noida City Centre station after which it has been changed now, said an official. The company is coming up with major mixed-use project known as ‘Wave City Centre’ in the area. The Wave City Centre is being built on 152 acres spread across Noida’s Sector 32 and 25A.

In fact, the same company has also won the bid for Noida Sector 18 metro station.

The contract will give the private firm marketing rights for the next 10 years and also 500 square metre of advertisem

ent space within the station. The Wave City Centre Noida station located at Noida Sector-32 is the eastern end of the busy line which connects the Trans-Yamuna national capital region with the western areas.

The other end of the line is Dwarka Sector 21 station.

The other eight stations up for renaming or branding are all located outside Delhi. They include Vaishali, Golf Course, Botanical Garden, Noida Sector 18, MG Road, HUDA City Centre, IFFCO Chowk and Guru Dronacharya stations.

When asked the reason for stations in Delhi not being renamed, a metro official said, “The policy in Delhi does not allow DMRC to change names of metro station for branding or simply put, revenue generation. But, there is no such restriction in the policies under Uttar Pradesh and Haryana governments. Hence, we can only open bids for stations outside Delhi.”

Incidentally, Rapid Metro in Gurgaon already follows this practice. It has stations which have been given out to companies that bid the highest for the right.

These include Vodafone Belvedere Towers, Indusind Bank Cybercity and Micromax Moulsari Avenue stations.

In December 2014, the Noida Metro Rail Corporation had announced that they will also auction the station naming rights along the 29.07 km Noida–Greater Noida metro line prior to it opening in late 2017.