Middle of the Pyramid Real Estate

Millenum Spire, a global real estate company, is raising a $1 billion dollar fund that will focus on providing low-cost entry housing to the emerging Indian middle class. According to Ashish Bhalla (from VC Circle), who is a managing director along with his brother Abhijeet, this area of the market has largely been ignored by the real estate investment community.

Our investment philosophy is to concentrate on core fundamentals. We will target lower entry cost cities that will benefit from Knowledge and industrial sector growth, and infrastructure by the government. It has to work in sync with an ecosystem of a civic, social and real estate infrastructure. But, the planning policies are myopic in India. There is no centralised, compiled database for land records available, a lack of which ultimately makes the cost of the land expensive. Because you just don’t know the availability of water, roads and other infrastructural facilities around that area. It needs to be professionalised.

A lot of real estate development that is happening today in India is primarily keeping in mind the investor and not the end user. We want to create asset bases, which give people their value for money. We aim to address the “middle of the pyramid” class of people. We are not looking at a super premium, mega luxury kind of accommodations, but targeting the emerging middle class, who looks for affordable, comfortable housing, and the value for his money in return.

The entire interview can be found here.