ECONOMIC TIMES BEST REALTY BRANDS 2015 "THE REALTY CONVENTION"

INDUSTRY / REALITY 

Building 

the future with 

‘The Realty Convention’

March 28, 2015 Mumbai: Real estate is one of the most promising sectors in today’s booming Indian economy. Realty is not just a basic necessity, but an important investment decision today. The user who was previously guided by utilitarian needs, today considers varied parameters before making an informed choice.

Keeping this in mind, ET Edge hosted the Economic Times Best Realty Brands 2015 at Sahara Star in Mumbai. The brand in real estate, like all other industries, is the strongest symbol of trust, quality, and exclusivity and carries forth a semblance of a good investment.

The ‘Economic Times Best Realty Brands 2015’was attended by notable industry players such as Vijay Wadhwa (Chairman, The Wadhwa Group),BomanIrani (CMD, Rustomjee Group), Yash Gupta (MD, Hines Group), Josy Paul (National Creative Director, BBDO), Jogy Thomas (CEO, ATS Green) andJoseph George (CEO, Lowe Lintas + Partners)among several others. There were conversations and discussionson various topics pertaining to ‘Building credibility & trust in market place’ to ‘Developing a brand with global footprint'.

Speaking on the occasion,Deepak Lamba, President, Times Conferences Limited, said, “As we stride boldly into a better, brighter tomorrow, the real estate sector will be pivotal in making it all possible. The potential for development in the real estate sector is tremendous and is expected to generate over 17 million employment opportunities across the country by 2025. The Best Brand initiative was started a year back guided by research study by Nielsen. With the Economic Times Best Realty Brands 2015, we aimed to highlight the best of the best in the country, and we believe we’ve accomplished that by recognizing the achievements of those that are well-established and those that are as yet upcoming brands.”

While discussing ‘Building credibility & trust in market place’, the panel had several interesting views on the topic, with Mr. Vijay Wadhwa saying that “Somewhere, I blame the customer too. Greedy customers can be taken advantage of by greedy so-called builders. Customers should go for brands that have a track record of development, not someone with a pretty brochure or selling a home for a few rupees less.” Summing up the general opinion of the panel, Mr. Yash Gupta, (MD, Hines Group) stated that, “ It is not the brand that makes the building, it is the building that makes the brand.”

Some of the brands felicitated as part of the Economic Times Best Realty Brands 2015 included Rustomjee, the Wadhwa Group, the Prestige group, Mayfair Housing, Omkar Developers, the Lodha Group, Kolte Patil Developers Limited, DLF Ltd, the Adityaram Group and many more.

This summit was attended by 100 + Senior level Decision makers (Managing Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Country Managers, Heads of Planning, Urban Planners, Town Planners, Civil Engineers, Structural Engineers, Research Associates) from the industry, thus affording delegatesthe ideal opportunity to learn from the leading minds of the industry and network with them at leisure.

The survey identified the most promising brands as perceived by consumers in urban (10 Lakh+ towns) India across select categories and select brands as provided by ET Edge. Brands that were launched between 2000 and 2014 were in the consideration set.

The survey was carried out in two stages: in the first stage, ET Edge invited brands to participate in the survey through a call for nomination. The final list of 162 brands to be administered was provided by ET Edge to Ipsos for consumer survey. Hence, findings of the survey are limited to the 162 brands that were part of the consumer survey. In the second stage, a consumer survey was conducted by Ipsos with a design sample of 3,864 distributed across socio-economic classifications (ABC), age (15-45 years), gender and geography. Face to Face interviews were conducted with the target group with a structured questionnaire. Respondents evaluated brands they were familiar with. Each respondent could rate a maximum of 27 brands based on their familiarity levels.

With a view to focusing on the core target audience for most branded products and services the survey was restricted to SEC A, B and C households in selected eight cities.  The total design sample size 3,864 was distributed across eight cities- Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Patna, Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

There were 10 parameters on which all brands were evaluated namely

       Develops luxury properties

       Builds cost effective properties

       Good quality of construction

       Amenities provided are best

       Trustworthy brand

       Project vicinity to necessities

       Attracts lessors

       Price appreciation of the properties built

       Builds environment friendly projects

   Comes up with spacious designs

Basis the association, a score was arrived at for each builder. This score was weighted by the rank given by the respondent to the builder and hence we got a weighted score for each parameter. The sum of all weighted scores on each parameter helps us arrive at a final score for each real estate brand.

About ET Edge: Times Conferences Ltd. functional under the brand name ET Edge is an Economic Times subsidiary, founded to empower multiple industries and segments by sharing critical business knowledge through strategic conferences and summits. Encompassing the Indian business vista, ET Edge would strive to bring together visionaries and key leaders on its knowledge platforms to create social and business ecology, conducive to the positive changes required by the industry. The main aim of this initiative is to channel global business intelligence through summits and conferences in overarching lectures, hands-on workshops, panels, roundtables and case studies. The forums would ensure senior decision makers are equipped with information to respond to challenges they face not just in India but also globally.