Opportunities don’t happen. You create them
Part 1
Untech myself :: Yes, its true before you venture into construction industry from any other domains you got to reform, remodel, rethink and restructure to be a business owner. I wish I could have used the word START-UP back in 2011 when I made the big move to India. The one year plan to tryout the waters in real-estate has become a carrier/life-style within couple years. Thanks to my first project Parimala Trinity.
Parimala Trinity: Bangalore was/is a technology/IT hub. Back in 2010-11 ORR (outer ring road) was new and attracted good amount of tech giants to start the operations. The first company I spotted was Intel other than BROADCOM (where i am supposed to report for an year). I expected the tech offices in India as compared to Orange County/San Diego to be lot less modern. It was indeed an opposite.
When I worked in Orange County Broadcom offices were pretty old (atleast the building i was, cos the real expansion happened after i returned to india) and here in Bangalore it is all new and designed as 5-star facility. Businesses were booming in India back in 2011. Any idea/plan would work. So we planned almost 200 units of apartment complex around Bellandur/ORR area. Just out of gut feeling we knew it will work as there was a tonne of requirement due to sudden boom in IT around the place.
Part 2
Family support: The biggest decision for me has been relocating to India. Unconditional support I received from the family made it possible. My 1+ yr old son had no choice other than support me, but the support from my life-partner shaped my life-style. Thankfully my bother and father had been in the business of construction and it was an easy way to learn for me. All I have to do is fuse my global exposure into family expertise and present it. It did work!
Part 3
To be a builder: Frankly I hated this word at the beginning. Its type-casted mindset of everyone to call someone is real-estate as a builder. Unfortunately we are developers and what I used to insist when I started. They say, what you are is what you experienced. My first construction project gave enough of that.
The first couple years in construction gave me enough to ponder and wonder. Looking back it feels just an experience shaping me up.
Its a Trinity! “untech+family+builder”
Parimala Trinity: it has almost 200 units of 2/3 bedroom homes divided into 3 blocks. Name makes more sense to me than others…unless you know me hahaha.
Plan it: Mr. Bob (name changed for confidentiality purpose) owns 3 acres of land around the Bellandur area, Little that we know, the area would be so hot after 10 years. We did take up the challenge to develop the property where there was merely any good road approach. It is just 1 km from ORR and first thing we did is to form a kaccha road for last 500m. It gives chills to see what that road has become of now.
Lot of thought and study went to plan the right choice of homes. We had come to a sweet spot of 40lakh for 2bhk and 60lakh for 3bhk. Are you kidding me…today its tripled! After so much discussions between us, we split the project into 60% 2bhk and rest 3bhk homes. Since there is large enough land area we were able to divide into 3 blocks with lot of landscaping (this is still the best of our plans in terms of landscaping).
Kick-off: The actual fun/trouble starts only after planning. Inspite of planning in according to the bye-laws and rules of the local corporation, the building permissions from our notorious corporation poses a sweet challenge/s. One thing i realised is you cannot change the system. Yes you guessed it, you change to suit the system. There is so many facets of impressing the system to get necessary approvals. The approval authority system is totally hack proof. I learned to say yes-sir ok-sir. This is just the beginning. More the grease faster the doors open in the system. We had to go through highs and lows of sign curve and finally secured the approvals. What a relief…construction took-off!!
No launch: The take-off is such a pleasure, but we got ourself a white elephant. Such a massive construction work we ourselves wondered how did we got here. Now that we are, we find a way out and finish. When we did the cashflows for couple quarters (forget about completion) it is shooting off the roof and heads. For a beginners like us, no banks would be interested. We had formed a firm decision that we will not go to investors/biggo’s and get stuck later (one of the wiser decisions we took).
The only way out for us is to go to market and find the endusers/homebuyers. Just looking around we came to know we have to do a big-bang launch and make some noise to be noticed. We planned to put a big project hoarding at site to start with. fortunately that never happened… I was a one man marketing/sales champ at site. I used to work 12 hours if not more 7 days a week. This is apart from my other tech job which runs in the night hours. God what a time it was. May be it was god sent…met with groups of individuals from LSI, Intel, Cisco etc on ORR. Most of them are from my own background of semiconductors and mobile chipset design. I was impressed with the semiconductor work happening in India and at the same time those groups of folk got impressed with me. The groups of purchases happened and before we know more the 75% inventory was sold. The plan/wish for launching the project and erecting hoarding never happened. But the project is sold-off!!
Little big setback: Just when we got settled and able to feed the mammoth project with construction cash flows, there was some legal setback hit us. This is when you get to see the legal system and how prone it is to litigators. Anyone can claim the property in court and create nuisance.
Someone like that dragged us claiming 5% of the land in our project. It does not matter if it is 1% or 100% the legal system takes the same amount of time. Multiple lawyers and multiple courts and many hearings happened. Not only we have to prove land belongs to you, you also need to prove it does not belong to the litigant…what a joke! We did it both.
Customer is king: Everyone knows this. But still got to experience it to fully believe it. Yes I did. Not all the homebuyers will be on your side or on the same page. Believe it or not, we delivered the project much ahead of time. In 18 months the project is almost ready to fit-outs. This is when the customer is real king.
Give/take no trouble: Be it a vendor or homebuyer or contractor or consultant we don’t want to take advantage. This been said, we will not let anyone take our advantage. This simple funda sure did help. There are many instances of such, I don’t want to bore you!
When most of them are happy and paying fully and registering, some don’t. We have to just be patient and only hope they all do.
Handover: Completing the construction in record time (for us) is just one part. Those homebuyers who think the completion is only after getting occupancy certificate (OC)from authority it poses another challenge for us to handover. Procuring OC from authorities is walking into lions den 10 years back. I should say it is little better now. This sure is nothing to do with the homebuyers move-ins. After months and months of struggle and hustle we got the OC. I saw the first sign of my greying!! uuffffhhhh….no words to explain the efforts we put in.
Its all about community: Like a Bollywood movie inspired by Mr. Shakespeare …”all wells that ends well”. I cherish the beauty we created and it is a pride for us. Most importantly the neighbourhood and community which formed in it. It is just amazing to see how when the community is formed and so many families made this their home formed lifetime bonds and friendships. What can i say more…all is well!!
