Interview with Sanjay Haware, Director, Haware Engineers & Builders Pvt Ltd

Haware Builders” is the organization which is taking giant strides in the cheap and affordable housing space. – Executive Director, Sanjay Haware and Aniket Haware- Director of Haware Engineers & Builders Pvt Ltd, spoke toSapna Srivastava about the journey of the company and how they see the ‘Housing for All” initiative shaping up. The seeds of the Haware Builders were sown by the founder Chairman & Managing director of the company, late Satish Haware, an architect with an established architectural practice in Navi Mumbai. Having come from a humble background and having seen the housing related challenges of the common man closely, he took it upon himself to solve this problem. Sanjay Haware fondly recounting the start of the company narrated, “In 1995, the entire family had gathered for Diwali. It was there that Satish floated the idea of starting a real-estate development firm that will construct reasonably priced houses. So, we four brothers left our respective jobs and came together to start the company ‘Haware Engineers & Builders’.   “Our family has always been of social mindset and we believe in giving back to the society. The very idea of coming up with this company was to cater the housing need of the masses.”Sanjay Haware Navi Mumbai had just come in existence at that time. In 1996, CIDCO had launched land plots for sale and those who had bought them to develop were finding it difficult because of the recession in real-estate at that time. The owners of these plots approached Haware Builders.“The plots were at five different locations. We not only developed these land parcels but were also able to provide them with houses at very affordable prices as they had wanted. This marked the beginning of the company as developers in the affordable housing segment. Similarly, we developed housing projects in Kharghar in Navi Mumbai and sold them at Rs 900/sft.  Our differentiator has been that we do not just build housing complexes but develop the infrastructure around it so people come and stay there. For instance, for our initial projects, we build approach roads, power substation and even street lights, sewer lines and drinking water facility as those areas in Navi Mumbai were yet not fully developed by the authorities and lacked infrastructure,’ said Sanjay. Success of their first project led to many other successful ventures such as mass housing for BEST employees and Mumbai Police for which they tied up with respective departments and HDFC Bank. “The employees of these departments were literally given houses of one room, kitchen & bathroom at Rs. 5000/- . Many of these employees who were living in slums like accommodations were elated to have a pucca house, especially the women for whom the biggest amenity was the toilet in the house. When my brother Satish expired in 2005, many of these people had put up his photographs in their houses, “stated Sanjay. Getting the formula right Haware Group founded in 1996, till date has facilitated more than 60 million square feet of residential, commercial & retail development and redevelopment across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai & Thane. With more than 5 million sq. feet of work under construction & planning, the company endeavours to provide an integrated solution for the real-estate development. Aniket Haware, son of Sanjay Haware and the next generation entrepreneur who is now taking forward the legacy of the company explained, “All our projects are based on the research conducted to know the customers true preference in terms of their living and working needs. The findings are then converted into broader pointers for the project engineers to plan the execution of the project. For instance, to keep the costs down, in the time of rising prices of all materials, land and commodities, we reduced unit sizes, cut back on frills and focused on basic amenities that the buyers preferred. This kept the housing cost in check and suited the target audience demand.” Sanjay added, “The National Housing Bank saw our model of housing development and proposed the same format to the government which I believe has now developed into the “Housing for all” scheme of the government for the entire nation. “We built small houses for the economically weaker section, way back in 1996 which in new terminology can be named as “Nano Housing”. But that was the demand and need of those buyers, which we identified and catered to.”Sanjay Haware.   To read more: http://realtyplusmag.com/pioneers-of-nano-housing/