$100 million proptech incubation fund to go live by Oct-Nov: CREDAI president Irani

With new leadership comes a new set of goals, action plan and spiritedness. Last month Boman R Irani, chairman and managing director of realty firm Rustomjee, took over the reins at the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India (CREDAI), the realty body with over 13,000 developers as members, as its president. Speaking to DH’s Shakshi Jain, he dwelled on the realty body’s agenda under him this year, the special place nurturing of start-ups on the anvil and also had a word of advice for prospective property buyers.

Edited excerpts.

What’s on CREDAI’s agenda this year?

We have reactivated our IGBC (CII’s Indian Green Building Council) tie up and made it stronger. I’m encouraging our members to at least build 4 lakh homes (green certified) by 2030. We continue to have our interactions with the government.

We’re creating a communication channel where scores of developers in the country can read exactly what CREDAI is doing. Hopefully we’ll be up with a Twitter and a LinkedIn handle which would be for CREDAI president, by the 15th of this month. If not, then at least by June, we should be there.

There is a lot of regulatory oversight in our business, which is great. But when a regulation comes into force, it comes into full force without a a transition policy thought of. So we’re going to work on a transitionary policy for all new policies that come into play.

We also plan to work with the housing ministry and discuss points on RERA. It has been extremely effective and can be more so. RERA also has a lot of data sitting with it. So how does the community, the government, the financial institutions, the consumers - all benefit from this data?

What about startups in the realty sector?

Real estate is one of those sectors that has still not been disrupted (by start-ups). We at CREDAI are working on incubating a fund for startups. We will have a full-time team evaluating proposals that come, which are, hopefully disruptive in nature or for the betterment of real estate in the long run. We are putting together a fund which should be in excess of about $100 million to start off with. And this fund should be announced hopefully by October - November this year. The vision is that we need to put a lot more into research, new tech and new areas of tech.

What is your key advice to prospective property buyers?

My first advice to every buyer is - know what you want. Then go for value, not for price. Please do your due diligence - check the RERA registration, go through the terms mentioned therein. It is very important to go where infrastructure is going because infrastructure will lead to multiple growth of your property value. Buy as per your ability - don’t get too conservative and at the same time, don’t try to optimise too much. On an average, if you’re a buyer and you’re in your early 30s, you can buy on the basis of a forecast as to what your salary will be when you’re 40, because that will give you a medium of the kind of value that you can buy.

Over and above everything else, one should also see the kind of reputation that the developer has and then accordingly invest your money. Location is very, very important.

What are the challenges facing the developer fraternity in India?

One of the things that we’ve got to continue to work towards is streamlining the regulatory pathway.

In today’s day and age, with the number of changes brought about in the regulatory framework of the financial institutions, access to funds has become that much more critical. Real estate is largely a money business, right? In India so far, we’ve been lucky that sales have always been ahead of the development being done, but those trends are also changing.

And finally, I think we need to improve our talent, at both - blue collar and white collar levels. We also have a huge dearth of blue collar labour. There is a need for automation, but at the same time, we need to improve our labour capabilities and strengths because finally, without people, no job gets done.

Despite proper Acts in place, why aren’t housing rentals being regulated in several cities, not to mention the bizarre conditions landlords are setting, especially for young renters?

I think it’s common knowledge that supply and demand is a situation that kind of governs prices and no Act or rule can actually force the free market economy to work in any other way.

Quite honestly student accommodation is something that we are working on with various state governments because that comes under state in terms of development control rules. We’re also working towards creating working women’s hostels.