The Great Indian Property Show

Now here’s a thought – something that surely has the potential to become a blockbuster business.

It's always the middle-class who enjoy being empowered these days – from the dubious Right to Information Act (don’t get me started) to unrealistic mortgages (I can’t imagine paying off anything in 25 years!) and mall-hopping (the most repulsive new-age trait of them all).

In a country like ours, the poor are always deprived of financial inclusion. Yet, it is these people that dare to dream the most. There’s a number of initiatives which are being ‘driven’ (not very diligently, I might add) by our honourable government, and there are a number of initiatives by non-profits and banking institutions alike to promote micro-credit in the country, but what I see as an equally large problem / opportunity is not just about the money. It’s got to do with the age-old, tried and tested roti-kapra-makaan.

I’m sure your fingernails have been reduced to pretty much nothing by now, but here’s what I’m getting at.

The basic premise is that the poor in India dream. Nothing new there. They dream about buying property – invariably land – and this is all self-financed through ‘internal accruals’, family savings and soft loans.

The problem is that these people are largely creditworthy (much more so than the salaried middle-class, who seem to think that everything is free and that they have some kind of divine right to be first in, last out – read, stocks and shares, et al….heylow?)

But I digress.

These people are creditworthy, and are RIPPED OFF all the time – they do not have access to professional advice, they have no access to credit, they have no access to conveyancing or legal support, and they have to BRIBE everyone from the top down to get the land registered, deeds transferred, etc.

So much for the government’s much touted e-governance projects which have soaked up, at last count, many thousands of crores of the TAXPAYERS money.

Why not get together and set up a private-public partnership which empowers poor people when they make property transactions?

Set up the infrastructure, give them the support, enlist stakeholders such as banks to also offer advice, etc (I know banks do this with their ‘business banking’ and ‘commercial banking’ clients) – and spread a little feel good fuzzy warm feeling amongst a community that is ignored, neglected, deprived and yet, consistently exploited?

If you’re interested in learning a bit more or want to contribute your time and expertise to this project, let me know. In the meantime, spread the word – and yes, its not a charitable venture – there’s money to be made in it, all of it legit.

Parting thought: if there are, say, 1 million transactions per year, and you levy a fee of 1000 Rs per transaction, then you could say that the size of the addressable market would be in the region of 1 Billion Rs. That would make any VC salivate, but then he’d turn around and ask you about execution – but I’m not telling (for the moment!).

Oh yeah, and if you could get a 1% share of the addressable market, then your turnover would be 10 Million Rs in the first year – if you could then demonstrate growth over 6 consecutive quarters - say, 30%, then I estimate that your market cap would be in the region of 100 Million Rs sometime in Year 3.

Not bad, huh?

oRiOn