A lot of unlearning happens: RMZ’s Anand on new realty asset classes

'What pandemic has also done is changed the outlook of our clients. They want terraces, they want a lot of things oriented around wellness,' says Isha Anand

The real estate sector saw strong recovery gains in 2022 with office space transactions breaching the 50 million square feet mark. It however, remained shy of the pre-pandemic levels of 60.6 million square feet seen in 2019. Isha Anand, Associate Director of Development (Design) at RMZ Corp dwelled on the outlook for this commercial segment in this calendar, the upcoming asset classes and sustainable architecture, talking to DH’s Shakshi Jain.

Excerpts from the conversation:

What are some of the key projects that you’ve worked on at RMZ and what were the challenges that you faced while handling them?

I’m the pandemic baby of RMZ. I joined in June, 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. I was on-boarded to lead the Hyderabad projects - Nexity and Spire. I think I faced the same problem that the entire world was facing - cost escalations because of the pandemic, etc. So, my first challenge was to make those projects happen, within the kind of budgets committed to. All this whilst not losing the brand value and the design vision of the architect - who were DP Singapore in this case. And I think RMZ commands a higher rental than the rest of the market. So compromising the product was not an option.

The other challenges would be tackling the new asset classes. How do you integrate a hotel and an office? We are trying to work on these very hybrid projects where certain asset classes coexist.

The third is delving completely into new asset classes such as industrial logistics and data centres. The metrics or the basics that we are used to in an office as a class - they are completely different in those two. For example, in data centres, there’s no concept of square footage. You already talk in terms of megawatts. It’s not as straightforward as it would be, in an office scenario. So there’s a lot of unlearning that happens, to learn new things when it comes to newer asset classes.

What is your outlook for the commercial arm of Indian real estate in 2023?

What pandemic has also done is changed the outlook of our clients. They want terraces, they want a lot of things oriented around wellness. Everyone is talking about sustainability. We are looking at Fortune 500 companies - all of them have set their ESG targets and set their net zero goals and all those things come at a cost when it comes to building design.

I think the wiser thing to do is not get frightened by the current scenario and think a bit longer, because eventually all those clients are going to come into places which comply with their brand ethos, their philosophy on sustainability... Like if you see already in UK, in the US, there are climate action policies which have come into place, which have actually made a lot of buildings redundant because there are huge penalties being levied on those for non-compliance with wellness or sustainability measures, that’s gonna happen very soon in India as well.

What are your thoughts on the coalescence of technology and realty?

I can put it in the context of RMZ because we are completely trying to digitise and digitalise everything. I think manual intervention is not going to work for us eventually. With regards to projects we are creating data control centres. Basically sitting here, I can monitor my projects in Hyderabad. I will have every data input. It’ll basically be one dashboard - I’ll know how many labourers are on site, what is the cost incurred so far and what is the anticipated closure cost.

We are currently in the process of developing that first file. When it comes to design for all our projects, we are moving to a completely BIM platform (software use for planning and managing building designs). The idea is to convert it into a digital twin eventually.