Editor’s Note

The present Government at the Centre, it seems, means business when it comes to urban infrastructure development. On May 24, Urban Development and Housing Minister Venkaiah Naidu announced the names of 13 more selected ones for the ambitious Smart Cities project. This time the announcement is more significant for Delhi-NCR realty scenario as cities like Faridabad, Chandigarh and Lucknow find a place in the list. What should bring added cheer is the minister’s announcement that work on the earlier selected 20 cities is set to
commence on June 25. Venkaiah disclosed this while speaking to a TV news channel.

Concurrently, continuing with R&M focus on urban development, we spoke to Delhi Development Authority (DDA) Vice-Chairman, Arun Goel. The man, who in a couple of months will be completing one year as V-C, is focused purely on public delivery. Goel has taken a slew of people-friendly and transparent technology initiatives to improve public interface. He has many more initiatives up his sleeve and claimed in an exclusive interview to us that a lot of positive changes would be visible in the functioning of DDA in the next six months.

In our quest to do something good and different, we organised a grand investment-cum-alliance summit in Srinagar on May 14. Six prominent Delhi-NCR realty players accompanied Team R&M to the ‘Kashmir Calling’ event in Srinagar to meet and interact with businessmen, HNIs and prominent civil society members from the Valley. The profile of the gathering, the tone of the discussions, the sentiments expressed and the assurances delivered by both sides proved that the first-ever such initiative undertaken by R&M was able to achieve its objective in more ways than one. The Kashmiri delegates were particularly impressed with the honesty of purpose displayed by the Delhi team. Most of them were highly excited at the prospects of housing and infra scenario in the Valley getting a huge uplift in the near future.

Continuing with our efforts of taking new initiatives, this issue onwards we are starting a new series ‘Zoom-In’. In this section, we will zoom into the different Characteristics of a prominent realty player which are not known otherwise. We start off the series with Neeraj Gulati, Managing Director, Assotech Realty. We were surprised to find that besides being a successful developer, Gulati is an art connoisseur and invests heavily in art and many other diverse socio-cultural fields. Business for Gulati is not just the art of making money but making life richer and meaningful by indulging in his passions and serving the deprived sections of society.

In our Developerspeak section Manju Gaur, Director, Gaursons, details out why the company’s 250-acre Gaur Yamuna City township developed alongside the Yamuna Expressway is the major centre of attraction. Another prominent Delhi-NCR realty player Dhiraj Jain, Director, Mahagun, lists out the advantages of buying a property in Noida. He says Noida is one of those realty markets which cater across the segments.

In addition, the June issue contains your regular reads – home loan rates offered by various lenders, property rates of different localities of different cities, Vastu
column, and what your stars hold for you in the next one month.