Wealth is not an entitlement: Lodha
Real estate is something Abhishek Lodha understands, so joining the company his father, Mangal Prabhat Lodha, started in 1980 was a natural choice. Lodha, 37, is managing director of Lodha Developers Pvt. Ltd, the country’s largest real estate company in terms of sales volume. His father is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly from Malabar Hill in south Mumbai. Lodha’s younger brother, Abhinandan, heads Lodha Ventures, a financial services firm. Land is the only thing that’s not manufactured, says Lodha. “In the long-term, real estate has always generated tremendous value. For centuries people have owned homes, palaces and lands because they know that the value of good property always appreciates.”
Lodha Developers is targeting a doubling of revenue to Rs20,000 crore in the next three years. The company is on course to achieving this target, says Lodha, though the real estate business overall hit a rough patch after demonetization in November and a changing regulatory landscape (in May, the much-awaited Real Estate [Regulation and Development] Act, came into force. While the Act is aimed at bringing transparency and accountability in the sector, developers are concerned that it could slow down new launches and affect sales in the short term). The company has outperformed its peers in the last three years, selling homes worth up to Rs8,000 crore annually. At a time when most real estate firms are consolidating and looking for ways to beat the slowdown, the group has expanded its footprint—it is building a luxury residential project, Lincoln Square in London, which is expected to be completed in 2018.
Back home, the group’s portfolio is spread across Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. Including the project in London, it is developing an estimated 43 million sq. ft of prime real estate. The projects include World One, a 117floor residential tower in Mumbai billed as the tallest building in the country; and Palava, a 4,500-acre township in Thane district of Mumbai, which the company claims will be India’s first smart city. The group is also ramping up its commercial real estate business, with plans to build around 9 million sq. ft of office space in Mumbai alone. Lodha’s days are packed, but he says he doesn’t feel the pressure of expectations.
“I have never felt any sense of pressure,” says Lodha, who joined the company in 2003.