27 July 2016

Guest lecture
Mr. Deepak Bhavsar, Director, DhRa Development Management Solutions Pvt addressed real estate students and faculty members on “Urbanization: Cities Evolution & Growth Process”.

He has worked as an architect, in an environmental field. He explained that real estate sector is developed sector in the developed countries and over a period of time lot of transparency and other things are in shape in India and this sector is definitely going to boom as well.

Mr. Bhavsar recalls that real estate had no formal education while he was starting a career in this sector and that everything that he has learnt is actually knowledge gained by experience. He points out that the times are changing now and formal education in real estate has been introduced leveraging the experience of professionals that has been gained by working on various projects. This formal education is now available in the country and students are benefitting from all the knowledge shared by industry experts in collaboration with academicians.

During the lecture, he emphasizes on the paradigm shift where cities are becoming more and more prominent and typically the business has involved into specific service lines. The service lines include consulting valuation, research, feasibilities segment, project development services, facilities management, energy management, brokerage, capital markets etc.

“RICS SBE, came into existence when there was no formal education of real estate in the colleges so and what existing professionals have learnt is actually hands on experience. The course which RICS SBE is providing is being benefitted from so all our learning’s and actually have been hands on by working on different kinds of projects and based on the business sentiments that have evolved the business as per the demands of the clients and the foresight which we had getting in the new sectors as the opportunity came."

 

He focused on why cities are important. The earlier settlements they came along the rivers typically drinking water sources. Later on those became their training course as ports and all emerged and then cities grew where there were economic drivers in place. So that economic driver could be an industrial township which came out near the raw material source or it could be a new administrative capital like Gandhinagar for example where that was the core economy driver and the supporting population comes in. These were the major drivers which went about making the rise of the cities. And then there are mixed economies so you have multiple economy drivers so you have let's say Bangalore which also has manufacturing, lot of IT, other related services also come into play so the complexity increases as we grow over a period of time and as the city evolves.

Majority of the cities are on the sea and ocean front and that's been the traditional chain of thought as par him, as the cities grew around ports and all that, this is something which is logical. And what's going to have or what would be the prime drivers in the future is that we are going to have city regions which will kind of coagulate with a lot of regional infrastructure and they become prominent so in India for example, it's the DMIC Corridor so you plan big and you try to implement big and create regional infrastructure linkages so that you have economic corridor in place and this is happening globally and that'll continue to drive the organisation patterns. Here global connectivity is going to be very very important, you'll see a lot of carbon footprint strategies brought into the place by each of these cities. The quality of life indicators are going to be really important because the future cities are the one's which are going to attract investments and it's only possible if you have a substantial level of quality of life to attract the kind of citizens to particular place.

Growth of a city means let's say a lot of infrastructure investments which is been put in and a resultant growth of real estate happens so you need to understand what needs to come first and if a real estate course is happening why is it happening because of what all reasons. 300 million Indian move into urban areas in next 20 years the key issue is challenges still being housing, energy, water, waste already in transport. Other issues which should not be neglected and are playing a very key role is your quality of education, social inclusiveness and capacity building challenges and the present shortfall which we see in the cities in all these above aspects and the future needs which need to be incorporated so that's the big big challenge for us here in India that right now we can see where our cities are we know a lot needs to be done to actually bring them up the level where we can say that yes we are as, our cities are as developed as in the developed countries and the future cities how we are going to tackle the challenges of the organisation so that's a big challenge as well as a big opportunity for you guys to you know keep in mind and have a play. So what's the context to the whole thing it's a big and an ambitious opportunity which is there, we are talking 180 billion USD in 2020 and housing itself contributes you know 5-6% GDP so that's the big big opportunity which is there, right now it's the 2nd largest employer after agriculture and it's likely to grow with 30% in the next decade. So all good signs but why are things not moving, I mean that's again you know, in our question answer sessions. Construction industry ranks 3rd amongst the 14 major sectors in terms of direct indirect and induced effects in all sectors of economy so this is a very important sector for growth of GDP in our country and this is serious, if we get our act together through the right policies, right incentives, cleansing up the sector the whole country has such benefits.

Mr. Bhavsar on student’s skill set focused that if student want to excel then he/she needs to understand how the entire business will get disrupted in future and there are several forces at play and if you know where challenges are going to come from then you are future ready.

He mentioned that lot of good things are happening there so keep track of that. All the learning’s will get replicated here. Big data will be going to be a game changer, because right now everything is a game of data whoever has got the data is the king. Right now many businesses are flourishing simply because data is not readily...authenticate data is not readily available in India but suppose you would get record of all transactions, readily available to the public as a free service just imagine what how the entire business of real estate will be changing.

So basically be future ready because only quick learners and adapters will survive.

Deepak Bhavsar is an independent consultant (real estate, urban planning and architecture) and Director, DhRa Development Management Solutions. Holding a master’s degree in Urban Planning Thesis from School of Planning and Architecture, he has an experience of over 24 years in urban development and has participated in research and consulting projects across various sectors under The Ministry of Environment, India. He is also the former Managing Director (Strategic Consulting) at Jones Lang LaSalle where he led a pan-India team of over 60 professionals in the field of real estate advisory

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