Mahindra Lifespaces sets up office in Dubai

Leading Indian developer, Mahindra Lifespace Developers Limited, a part of the US$16.5bn Mahindra Group has opened its first international office in Dubai to address the property-buying needs of NRIs living in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

Speaking on the occasion, the company's CEO, Anita Arjundas revealed that a bulk of their investors based out of the UAE were buying properties priced between INR 4-5mn using their own funds, but the company also had select clients interested in buying luxe properties valued from INR30mn onwards.

Exhorting NRIs to invest in property back home Arjundas stressed that the time was right for NRIs investors to take the plunge with property prices more or less stable over the past year due to sluggish market conditions and the falling Rupee making property buying 10-20 percent cheaper for foreign buyers.

There was also ample scope for price appreciation over time, provided investors put their monies in the right projects in terms of their location, connectivity and infrastructure development, she added.

According to her, sales from global markets presently accounted for approx 20 percent of the company's total revenues. "We want to increase this to about 25 percent going forward and are setting up offices in key global markets to achieve this purpose and also cater to the needs of our overseas customers," she said.

The company's foreign agenda includes the setting up of new offices in key markets like Singapore and the US. The GCC region, comprising the Gulf nations is responsible for contributing more than half of the company's total revenues from global sales.

She further revealed that a major portion of the demand generated from the NRI community in the GCC region targeted projects in the south, across states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, while investors settled in countries like Singapore and the US had shown a preference for investing in projects located in cities like Pune, Mumbai, NCR, Bengaluru and Nagpur.

The company Mahindra Lifespaces has 12 projects located across cities like Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Gurgaon, Chennai and Hyderabad. Its residential and commercial development portfolio includes in excess of 8.92mn sq.ft. of completed projects and over 10.38mn sq.ft. of ongoing and future projects.