Track2Realty Roundtable Panelists—Dr Anil Sharma, CMD, Amrapali Group
Sunil Dahiya—Sr Vice President, NAREDCO & MD Vigneshwara Developers
Harmit Chawla—MD, HCorp Realty
PK Tripathi—President, Unitech
Moderator—Ravi Sinha, CEO & Managing Editor, Track2Realty
Ravi Sinha: Would any of you agree that the pipeline visibility and land bank suddenly has turned out to be a land liability?
Track2Realty Roundtable
Panelists—Dr Anil Sharma, CMD, Amrapali Group
Sunil Dahiya—Sr Vice President, NAREDCO & MD Vigneshwara Developers
Harmit Chawla—MD, HCorp Realty
PK Tripathi—President, Unitech
Moderator—Ravi Sinha, CEO & Managing Editor, Track2Realty
Ravi Sinha: Many of the developers have realised that focus on execution and not the land bank is the key. Companies which overleveraged their balance sheets or branched out into non-core areas have failed. Developers have also learnt it the hard way that real estate is a micro market business and fancy expectations of going pan-India can boomerang. Are not these tough lessons?
Ravi Sinha: In 2013 when most of the PE Funds are maturing, they may not be investing again in the real estate. So, from where will you generate the funds?
Ravi Sinha: I have a question here, and I will be very frank with Mr Tripathi. Any journalist who writes on real estate finds it very amusing that the sector has always tried to put the ball in the government’s court. Since you have been part of the government, how far will you agree to this?
Ravi Sinha: All said and done, land acquisition bill is going to be a reality. What are the issues that make you so critical of it? Is it just the fresh cost of acquisition?
Ravi Sinha: The point here is how feasible are the wishful thoughts of the sector in 2013?
Sunil Dahiya: The commercial essence of our product has been taken out. Now the consumer is saying let me wait for something, and he is waiting in eternity for something better to come. What he is waiting for, we also don’t know. So, the consumer has been loaded with confusion, and we are loaded with a product which is dead.
Ravi Sinha: I think Mr Tripathi has a very valid point that the CCI has emerged. You have also seen the wrong side of consumer activism in a Noida Extension kind of a situation. When we think of reforms, government is looking for a regulator and a whole lot of sector’s wish list has not gone down well with the government. Do you think that the sector will move ahead with some sort of reforms in the year ahead?
I welcome all the panelists in the final roundtable for Track2Realty Focus 2013. As we come to the end of 2012, it is time to look in & look ahead as far as the prospects of the realty sector are concerned. In this discussion, we would try to wrap up the year 2012, and see where the sector has been heading to in 2013. So, when you look at the year Mr Sharma, don’t you think “oh! what a waste.” So much was expected this year but nothing has moved forward, be it in terms of administrative reforms, fiscal reforms or land reforms; nothing has gone right for the sector.
Jhumur Ghosh welcomed the panelists, following which Ravi Sinha questioned the global competitiveness of Indian real estate in the wake of thousands of abandoned projects waiting for the funds, the debt-equity ratio imbalance, lending issues, pre-launches without RERA sanctions, and the developers’ defending the indefensible.
Can Indian real estate bridge the gap between the promise and the performance? Can Indian residential market attract as much investment as its commercial real estate? Will the global funds trust the Indian residential real estate? There are more questions than ever and it is time to settle these question marks over the business of real estate.