RE INDUSTRY HAS STARTED HARNESSING TECHNOLOGY IN A BIG WAY DUE TO THE PANDEMIC.

Vinit Dungarwal

Director, AMs Project Consultants

Tell us about the resl estate development in Pune in the last over two decades in the backdrop of the growth in infrastructure development projects.

Pune has emerged as a manufacturing powerhouse. It is also a centre for higher education and an IT hub. All these factors enabled it to earn a place in the initial list of smart cities. Strong involvement by citizens made this smart city initiative standout to a level that municipal corporations had to upgrade the infrastructure. This upgrade further helped enhance demand for residential units and commercial spaces. This demand has been on a rise for the last many years and has helped sustain the real estate market in Pune.

Tell us about the impact of the Covid pandemic on the residential sector in terms of demand and supply as well as the property prices.

The pandemic has impacted all the sectors of the economy and real estate was no different. However, the timely initiative taken by the government of Maharashtra to reduce the stamp duty on housing units, helped in boosting the demand in the stagnant real estate market that was hit by Covid-19. The stamp duty reduction from 5 per cent to 2 per cent in this state has been a game-changer and has helped in nudging the fence-sitters to buy the home that they had been planning.

The cost of supply increased drastically but demand prices didn't move up proportionally. The market is in the phase of consolidation and corporatisation to cater to the demand for compliance and cost of finance.

What is your take on the scope of redevelopment projects in Pune, similar to that in Mumbai. What are the peculiar challenges of the city when it comes to designing and balancing between the infrastructure and housing sectors.

In Pune, the government is promoting self-redevelopment by offering various incentives. The changes in 'Development Control Regulations' is also encouraging redevelopment and self-redevelopment. All this together is helping in upgrading the urban living standards.

How far the developers have adopted technology in overall improvement of efficiency and delivery, since this has become the need of the hour in the backdrop of the Covid pandemic where restriction on movement of people became a serious challenge, especially during the first wave?

The pandemic and the lockdown that followed was a tough phase. However, it also helped the real-estate ecosystem to press a refresh button. The industry has started harnessing technology in a big way. The site visits have been replaced by virtual tours. Additionally, contech (construction technology) is being used extensively to enable real estate companies to make better choices at the development stage and enable them to be environmentally conscious. The prop-tech tools are being used extensively for site management. Scheduling is another area where prop-tech is helping companies to avoid crowding and manage their workforce better.

Tell us about the features of your solutions and how it is benefiting the real estate sector - across segments like retail, residential and commercial? What are your future plans?

We provide project management services to the real estate sector and one unique feature of our service is cross-domain expertise. For example, we are delivering various healthcare projects and the knowledge that we have acquired through these projects is helping us to deliver Covid-19 complied office spaces. Retail projects are dependent on faster completion so that they can commence business and our expertise in managing Institutional projects, which are time / schedule sensitive, gives us an edge when we have to deliver retail projects in a short time. Our collaboration with a Singapore based quality assessment system is taking shape and in this post covid phase, we are looking forward to bring in international quality standards to residential projects in India.

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