Gaurav Goenka, a residential real estate developer in Chennai and Coimbatore, explains what he has learned over the last five years about real estate space in India.
Participant Sharing was one of the most valuable portions of the VALUEx conference. Similar to TEDx, the mic went around the room and each participant was given 5 minutes to speak. No slides or handouts were used.
Transcript:
I run a residential primarily I owned a real estate company and we develop residential developments in Chennai and Coimbatore. We are developing about one and half million square feet of residential space right now value segment and other luxuries segment both combined.
And what I would like to talk about is the two primary learning’s that I have had because it’s a entrepreneur venture and it’s not a family business. I started it about 5 years back and two learning’s that I have taken home from the real estate space in India is that, real estate in India to a consumer, a property is one of the most apprehensive buys that any Indian makes in this country as a product. It’s probably one of the buys that the person is most afraid to make because of the lack of transparency and the historical baggage that this country has always bought along with this industry.
And the second is that the other learning that I have had is that in this business it’s extremely difficult to lose money as long as cash flow is correct. So this is if this business is can be looked at as a cash flow business as a opposed to a profit business, I will hazard saying it’s virtually impossible to lose money in this business as long as your cash flow is running. Ok, and the companies that can probably get that can address both these issues where they can bring phenomenal amount of comfort in the whole process of the end user buying and can remove this apprehension from the end user when he is buying a property and can develop a business that is, you know very rich in cash flow will always be very profitable real estate companies in this country.