Beginning of a New Era

From a family run proprietary business Acme Housing Group has transformed in to a professionally owned business house. Rajesh Doshi, Managing Director, Acme Housing Group in conversation with Realty Plus speaks about the future plans. . Rajesh Doshi completed his Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Universityof San Diego, USA and spent over a decade in business development and product management in the Silicon Valley. After gaining 15 years of international experience, Rajesh joined the family real-estate business, bringing with him the global perspective and internationally practiced industry standards in business. “Buying a home is a dream for every individual, a reasonably-priced home in a good locality is what a normal person desires in a city like Mumbai and to fulfill this desire, we focus on building homes and integrated self-sustained townships to enhance the lifestyle of the home-buyers. We are focusing on green buildings requirements, environment related requisites, efficient & energy conserving buildings and LEED certification for all our future projects, by involving green building consultants, architectural & structural technologies, creative & innovative construction technologies to ensure that we offer more and more ecologically friendly and certified green projects.” Acme Housing Group has in its last four decades completed over 100 landmark projects in residential, Industrial Estates, Commercial buildings & IT hubs.Now, we look forward with same enthusiasm in entering into affordable housing segment for our wider audiences in the areas of Karjat, Dombivli etc. Affordable Housing for Mumbai “Mumbai is now turning into an end-user market. Today, the ready possession property costs are substantially higher than the under construction property. With RERA coming in, hopefully the trust in the market and developers will grow and under construction property prices will start inching up. Real estate is a localized business and Acme will be focusing on Mumbai region only for its growth.Currently we have projects in and around Mumbai such as a 20 Lakh square feet project in Thane and others in Ghatkopar, Kandivali and Goregaon East that are up-coming. Our target audience is those home-buyers who cannot afford houses in the prime city locations. With the government subsidiaries and incentives to affordable home buyers, we feel the market in this segment will do well and profit margins will not be an issue.” RERA Implications “RERA is very simple, the only thing it asks is the clarity on what the developer is delivering. At Acme, we maintain the business plan and costs for every project. We have consultants like PwC working with the company, advise us on the compliance. I don’t see RERA is a challenge; it is the transition phase that will be challenging for most developers, especially the unorganized players. Such organizations will either form JVs with large developers or their projects will be taken over by organized builders, either ways the realty sector will see consolidation. Cost of the property will definitely go up as the project pre-launches will stop and supply will dramatically shrink within a few months. Maintaining a separate account for each project would ensure the project gets completed on time but there could be some challenges pertaining to the terms of joint venture with the landowners as they will now be considered the co-promoter. While, for buyers, this is a good time to buy property, for developers the transition period would be painful. But, as more clarity in RERA & GST provisions will come along, I think the real-estate sector will benefit in the long run, making it a level playing field for all the stakeholders.”