During the boom, many developers dreamed of transforming the urban landscape with millions of square feet of homes, offices and malls and set off on an aggressive expansion financed with debt that at 6 percent interest was cheap by Indian standards.
The operational inexperience of the developers’ is also being sewn up through strategic tie-ups with the majors in the hotel industry. An improving economic scenario and demand for more hotel rooms across categories is persuading international hotel chains to sign new management contracts with Indian developers and property owners, according to analysts. The industry will witness the announcement of a number of new hotels in the year ahead.
Developers are outdoing each other in bringing the latest technology, and offering exclusive amenities and luxuries, not to mention the big-ticket designer names. Track2Realty finds the concept of luxury living is increasingly being redefined as the Indian real-estate market matures. There is no dearth of buyers either, provided luxury living is customised with buyers’ profile, taste, choice and needs.
In view of the ever increasing housing shortage in cities and towns, the Union Ministry for Housing & Poverty Alleviation has decided to set up a high-level committee to recommend policy interventions to facilitate creation of rental housing stocks to cater to those who cannot afford to buy houses. The decision comes after several rounds of representation by the industry bodies, CREDAI & NAREDCO.
Ravi Sinha: To sum up the discussion, what kind of funding do you see emerging in the coming year?
Sunil Dahiya: What is happening is that we imported certain professionals from other industries and somewhere the vision and mission of the promoter was fueled by their greed or professionalism. They called it financial engineering. And that was the reason we got blocked from the IPO market. Today, whoever has filed DRHP, is going to face so much scrutiny and the band value itself will be discounted by 30%.
Sunil Dahiya: I will share a very personal experience. There was an IRS officer who was monitoring these IPOs at some level and said to me ‘Sunil you watch these IPOs, these are going to be windfall IPOs and then you will see watershed.
While most of the retailers in India blame more to the frontline cost of the real estate than supply chain hurdles, online retailers like MyGrahak project it as a cost competitive advantage.
When the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was to announce its annual monetary policy for 2012-13 on 17th April, there were widespread concerns of slowing economy, rising inflation, trade deficit of 4 per cent of GDP and drying FDI too emerging as a grace concerns
Ravi Sinha: One issue which Sunil raised on funding mechanism that it was a strategic mistake by certain developers to raise money through IPOs. I would like to rake this issue again and seek the panel’s view.