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'Realty Up For Mergers & Acquisitions', Lalit Kumar Jain CMD, Kumar Builders Exclusive Interview By smith, Section Pune Real Estate
Kumar Builders is a name synonymus with the real estate industry in Pune. One of the city leading entities, the group is spreading its wings across the country with projects in Pune, Mumbai, Banglore, Hydrabad, Nashik and Nagpur and is now looking overseas as well. the company has 10 million sq ft of development to its credit and has lived up to its slogan "we build trust" with prompt delivery of projects and quality service to its client. Lalit Kumar Jain CMD, Kumar Builders and President of PBAP, airs his views on the various facets of. and issues related to real estate in an exclusive interview with Realty Plus.
The opportunities in the real estate sector are infinite. There is a huge growth potential and those who are worthy should take up the challenge.
With soaring real estate prices,there is much talk of affordable housing. You said you will consider yourself to be a professionally successful in true sense only when you are able to deliver houses with an EMt of Rs 750- toRs 4,000. Is this possible and practical?
What is the USP and growth strategy of your group?
What are the current projects that you're focusing on?
On the residential front, we are launching three major townships near Hinjewadi and Kharadi and that is what is hot and happening for us this year. Also our existing projects like Kumar Kruti, Kumar Shantiniketan is a mega town- ship on Baner Pashan link road housing 375 luxury flats, Shantiniketan is built on the ethos of Rabindranath Tagore's world renowned Shantiniketan. A veritable green paradise with an abundance of water bodies, this modem edifice enjoys the best comforts in natural environs. Kumar Kruti in Kalyani Nagar offers homes that have been culled from 39 years of our home building experience and Sublime has spacious three-side open terrace apartments in Kondhwa. Click On "Full Story" For Full Interview....
How is the Pune market performing vis-a-vis the other metro cities? What are its Prospects?
Pune market is quite steady.Although we hear about slowdown in other metro cities, Pune is definitely showing improvement in sales over the , last three months. The demand and supply exist and so there is no issue of sales. What has happened is that over the last year the developers have changed their plans and compressed their flat sizes to counter the negative impact of high interest rates and cater to the budget of the customers in view of high Property prices. Property prospects in Pune are bright, especially as the IT sector is quite robust in view ofrising employment opportunities. Last year alone 100,000 new jobs were generated.
Township and mall culture has enveloped this IT city. What is your take on this? With a number of builders defaulting on project delivery and quality,do you think that the real estate sector needs something like registration,licensing and rating of builders? Whenever there is something like licensing, there is corruption. Real estate sector is highly capital- intensive and sothis could have a lot of disadvantages.However, self-regulation is the name of the game. Developer associations and groups should be promoted to regulate real estate and bring in best practices. What do you think about Indian real estate players tying up with foreign companies? I feel that more than foreign tie-ups, there will be a lot of mergers and acquisitions between Indian companies. This is something to look for in the future. Now that many developers are eyeing overseas projects, do you have any plans to develop projects abroad?
Today Middle East, South East Asia and Sri Lanka are conducive for development. But before venturing into foreign properties, one should first develop projects within the country. Projects in different cities will help one get more ex-perience and a chance to experiment. It is then that one should think of foreign front in safeguarding the interest of its members. Now that a lot of developers, especially small ones, are reeling under the credit crunch, is this apex body of builders doing anything to help them I tide over the crisis?
PEAP has taken a far-reaching initiative of launching a Realty Fund created by investments from its own members.It is for the first time in the country that an industry association has created a Realty Fund and smaller developers for the first time will have an opportunity to access equity funds that were hit her to unavailable to them. No one currently offers equity funding to smaller developers.Foreign and domestic equity funds look at large projects of 5 lakh sq.ft. or more but we will look at providing equity to small projects from half acre to two-acre size. This can be termed as providing micro finance for
The first series of the fund has a total corpus of Rs.25 crores. This has been fully subscribed by about 50 of the PEAP members. The investments made by the fund will be based on a. priority to the fund contributors followed by other members of the PEAP and lastly to the projects of non-PEAP In the first series, money will be deployed to support about five projects. The fund has been set up as a separate vehicle that can grow to manage larger funds and eventually can even consider getting listed as a mutual fund. Through his fund PBAP aims to expose smaller developers to global reporting norms, enable greater transparency and raise the all round standards with a view to uplift the industry. Source: Yogesh & www.realtyplusmag.com 12/July/2008
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What are the challenges facing the real estate sector? Also, what opportunities and trends do you see in the property market? 