Indian realty destination next for skyscrapers?

By: Ravi Sinha

Track2Realty Exclusive

1^st of the series

India has launched more than a dozen new skyscrapers taller than 240 meters (787 feet) and it seems the country stands out as the destination next for the skyscrapers. The Indian market is emerging as the happy hunting ground for various specialised service providers–right from architecture to design, and pre-fabricated structure to fast-forward elevators.

However, it also raises the question whether India has the bandwidth for the skyscrapers; the way China has gone vertically sky high to have 53 per cent of world’s skyscrapers under construction.

Toshiba, the Japanese giant with a sizeable presence in various emerging markets such as China and Middle East, feels it is time to tap the premium segment of Indian real estate market.

Toshiba’s study of the Indian market makes them believe it is time to shift focus to the country where they expect to contribute eight per cent to its global revenue with sales of $125 million by 2015. Toshiba has already tied up with Hiranandani for a couple of skyscrapers.

“India definitely offers a very lucrative market to Toshiba since high rise buildings are the only way to go and leading developers are showing great interest. With large and attractive demands by the developers planning luxury condominiums, luxury apartments, high-rise apartments and office buildings and five star hotels in India, Toshiba aims to fulfil these demands and offer safer, innovative, high quality and comfortable products and service to the Indian market,” said President and CEO Shinichiro Akiba on his recent visit to India.

However, the statistics often only tell half the truth and conceal that in practice such projects are more often than not marred by controversies. US billionaire Donald Trump’s dream to build India’s tallest tower in Mumbai is unlikely to come true any time soon after the civic agency, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) called for a halt to the project because Rohan Lifescapes, which is executing the project, had started work on the building itself though permission was given only for the soil testing.