The township in Madhurawada has every conceivable amenityfuturistic 220 villas, 32 sky villas, 1800 apartments, 132 duplexes, 8 triplexes, 16 penthouses, clubhouses, shopping mall, provision for a luxury hotel, hospital, international standard school. It is surrounded by hills and has a great stunning view and equipped with cyber security, solar street lights, biometric access, home automation, earthquake resistance, concealed cabling, themed gardens etc. It attracts even NRI Andhraites. What kind of competition did you face in the city? No competition, on the other hand, the Vizag’s market got the global attention with our entry. This positive development fetched us a lot of support from the local builders. Moreover, no other player has ventured with a project of this magnitude. In which stage is your project? We look at another three years to complete the township. Our units are saleable phase-wise. In 2011 we started the rst block of apartments and completed four acres site one year ago. Now people are living there. We have already handed over 50 villas with infrastructure, street lights, road, water supply, landscape and sewerage. The plan is for 220 villas (all sold out) in 25 acres. There is a high escalation in land price; did it affect you anyway? There is a maddening increase in the land and labour cost which naturally ups the construction cost. But the affect is applicable to all the real estate players; we are not alone to get affected by them. At Shriram Properties we believe the success in business comes from building not just houses but rapport with customers. What is that extra you offer to your customer? Not restricting our role to the selling stage, we are committed to post-sale services too. This has worked in our favour. We understand the emotions of the
customer. Whether he owns a villa or a two-BHK at, it is a dream home for him. So we try to make it as comfortable as possible for him. Let me tell you one more interesting fact, mostly buyers want to have their community in the neighborhood, so they spread the word among their circles. Believe me because of this sentiment, majority of our new clients are references of our existing ones. Most importantly, our customer in Panorama Our customer in Hills doesn’t Panorama Hills doesn’t buy a unit for buy a unit for investment investment but he wants to live here. but he wants to live here. Even some builders, who can construct houses for themselves, are inhabitants of Panorama Hills. This is the beauty of our project. How affordable are you? Who are your target customers? We don’t have any product in Panorama Hills for those who want a at for Rs.20-30 lakh. Our product is suitable for the upper middle class and higher segment because of the high land price. Our township is built on the land procured from VUDA. But as Shriram group also wants to cater to the commoner, we are scouting for lands in and around the city and within next couple of years we will go for budget homes as well. What more projects one can expect from Shriram Properties? As I just mentioned, our plan is to start our second project in Vizag in a year. We are also looking at Rajahmundry, Guntur and Vijayawada to launch various projects. Any commercial ventures? Shriram Properties’ second vertical is commercial projects. We already have taken up a few of them in Chennai. We are waiting for the AP government policies for commercial real estate market to crystalize and if anything interesting comes up we will surely take it up.
Are you interested to be a part of Smart City bandwagon? The details of the Smart City infrastructure are yet to be given, for example whether the land will be provided by the government or not. We are waiting for clarity in the guidelines and if things suit us, we would denitely be a part of it. However, our main focus at present is to cater to the lower segment customer. Any support from the government? As a builder our only request to the government is to give exemption or concession on service and income tax, VAT, registration charges which will make the buyer’s life easier. This will increase his purchasing power. We are not asking for any kind of concessions for us. What are you expectations from Vizag’s realty market? Vizag is a little different compared to the other places in AP. Here the demand is more than supply. We hope people’s purchasing power will go up in the coming years. This, in turn, will give us a strong presence in the city and through it a good hold on the AP market. What message would you like to give to Vizagites who want to invest? There is nothing like good or bad time to invest. The moment you decide to buy a property is the best time. Don’t look at Indian or global economy or Obama’s election. Sooner the better, you will only land up spending more next year. I like to add here. If a customer meets the eligibility, we are there to help and to make the buying process easy. This includes arranging nancing options too. red | july 2015 | 89