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Niranjan Hiranandani

Niranjan Hiranandani, MD, Hiranandani Group, shows many emotions in this candid interview with Niranjan Mudholkar. Joy at industry revival, anger at lack of leadership, excitement for future and hope for his dream - a housing revolution

He is known as the Builder Extraordinaire and a business doyen whose opinion matters. In fact, he has been instrumental in several policy reforms for the sector. While his market predictions are seldom off the mark, he prefers to talk more about dreams and visions for the construction industry.

He said the industry would bounce back and it did. So when he says affordable housing would constitute 50% of the market, people will take it seriously. And to think of it, he could have actually said goodbye to construction and focussed on textiles - hadn’t it been for a letter from the union of his weaving unit in 1981. “That was actually a letter from God,” he says. Subsequently, he sold-off the textiles unit and focussed completely on construction. He never looked back after that. “Our passion for excellence helped us establish a firm footing in the industry,” he states. Of course, he has had his share of challenges. He has been engaged in litigation with MMRDA over the alleged misuse of the quarry land in Powai. He isn’t ruffled while talking about it. “Every project has its problems. Mine is a twenty year old project. The people who handle the matters now are not the same people who handled them then. They see things differently.”

Powai is of course a milestone project - for the Hiranandani Group as well as for the industry. It ushered in the trend of mixed use development in India. He is also engaged in litigation about what could have been another trendsetter – the first highway mall. And he is hopeful about it. Of course, he is more excited talking about the world’s third tallest residential building that his son is building in Dubai. “It will be another milestone,” he says.

So you ask him what are the key milestones of ‘his’ journey and he wastes no time in saying: “Every day is a new milestone; every project is a new milestone; every change in the economic scenario is a new milestone. And every shift in terms of financial engineering is a new milestone.”

As a director at Hudco, you were part of the team that formulated the ‘National Housing Policy’ under Shri Ram Jethmalani, the then Union Minister of Urban Development. The catch phrase at that time was ‘Housing Revolution’. The idea was to create surplus of houses. That idea still remains an idea. Tell us more about it and what needs to be done if it is to become a reality?

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COMMENT   One of the finest residential complex in India. Hats off to Nirnanjan Hiranandani. There should be an industry leader li   1 Comments Read more comments »

You have to understand that we have a dream. Housing should be as easily available today as food or clothing. I want an equal definition as far as housing is concerned and that is my aspiration and desire. I think it doesn’t matter who does it. Certain revolutions take place when the government plays a role while others happen when the private players are involved. In the case of housing, both will have to do it together. And up to now, both have failed.

When the British left in 1947, there were no slums in Mumbai. The rich would stay in houses; the poor would stay in chawls. Basically, everybody had legally constructed relatively decent shelters either self owned or rented. Sixty years after independence, 55% population of the richest city in India lives in slums. This is a shame. The reason why this happened is because things have changed in the last sixty years but regulations have not. Regulations have to be modified to suit the times.

I always give the example of our late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri who ushered in the Green revolution. And he did it through illiterate farmers at a time when means of communication were not as developed. Moreover, finance was a limitation in those days. Today the builders are not illiterate and we have the best means of communication available. Moreover, there is no dearth of money today. Moreover, technology is not a constraint anymore. It is only leadership that is lacking. I have been pushing this issue myself and I agree that I have not succeeded. But I don’t think we can blame any one person for this failure. This leadership should come from both the industry as well as the government. So I think there is a combination of failure. This is what I have been trying for – whether it is through the National Housing Policy or through scraping the ULCC or through various measures taken by the finance ministry. Hopefully, one day we will come to a situation when it will be as easy to get a home as it is to get a mobile phone today. There was a time when a mobile phone call cost Rs16 per minute both ways plus STD charges. Today, it is less than Rs1 per minute. We hope to bring a similar revolution in housing.

You were a pioneer of the concept of integrated township in India. Today, we have many such townships ready or coming up across the country. How would you analyse the evolution of this concept? Do you think it is heading in the right direction?

I think we were the first in India to bring the concept of mixed use township. There were several residential as well as commercial townships earlier but we made the first mixed use township. It is an evolution of the old Indian trading concept – ‘Aage dukan, piche makaan’ (Shop in front and home behind). Today, it is also called walk to work. But we brought it in modern India. Today, we can see several successful models of integrated townships in India and some of them are more successful than Powai. And we are proud that we were the first to bring it in India. I am quite happy the way it has evolved and it will continue to develop further.