Godrej Properties is looking to add new housing projects worth about Rs 15,000 crore this fiscal year by purchasing land outright and by forming joint ventures with landowners. Mumbai-based Godrej Properties Ltd (GPL), part of the business conglomerate Godrej Group, is one of the leading real estate developers in the country.
In an interview, GPL’s Executive Chairman Pirojsha Godrej said the company had a “solid” first quarter in terms of sales bookings. The company’s sales bookings jumped five-fold to Rs 2,520 crore during April-June period — highest ever first quarterly sales.
He expects sales momentum to continue in the remaining quarters of this fiscal despite a hike in interest rates on home loans and an increase in housing prices.
We had laid out Rs 10,000 crore as our goal for booking values during the current fiscal year. We have already achieved 25 per cent of our target which is a good start, especially considering that sales in the third and fourth quarter are generally strongest,” said Pirojsha.
Asked whether the company would revise its sales booking target upwards, he said the company would like to “stick with this for now.” GPL clocked a sales booking of Rs 7,861 crore during the 2021-22 fiscal year and has set a target of Rs 10,000 crore for FY’23.
“Last year we did Rs 7,800 crore worth sales bookings. We have set a target for 27 per cent growth in this fiscal. Of course our aspiration will be to always do more, but we would not revise that goal for now,” said Pirojsha.
The company is targeting to launch about 20 residential projects, including new ones and new phases in the ongoing projects. GPL expects to deliver 10 million square feet area during the current fiscal as against 6.5 million square feet in 2021-22. On acquisition of new land parcels for future development, Pirojsha said: “The pipeline is super strong.” GPL is looking at “exciting” and “some big” opportunities for outright purchases of land parcels as well as joint ventures with land owners, across all four focus markets — Mumbai, NCR, Pune, Bengaluru.
“So I think I’m quite hopeful. We will have a large number of big announcements in the next few quarters,” he said.
Pirojsha said the company has not given any guidance on new business development but would like to add projects with gross development value (GDV) of Rs 15,000 crore this fiscal year to sustain growth in sales bookings.
In February, he had announced plans to invest USD 1 billion over the next 12-18 months on development of new projects.
Pirojsha said the company has started utilising the surplus cash and invested Rs 500 crore in the first quarter to acquire new projects. “Most of the funds are still available which we will be deploying over the coming quarters,” he added.
As per the company’s investors presentation, GPL has added a 58-acre project in Nagpur with saleable area of 1.5 million square feet. The estimated revenue potential from this project is about Rs 575 crore. GPL has also extended its existing arrangements with Shivam Realty to develop a residential group housing project at Kandivali, Mumbai.
“The project is an extension of Godrej Tranquil and Godrej Nest and will offer approximately 0.7 million sq. ft. of saleable area with an estimated revenue potential of approximately Rs 1,000 crore,” the company said.
Recently, GPL added a new project in MMR. Spread across 0.5 acres, the project will offer 1.2 lakh square feet of luxury residential development near Carmichael Road.
“The estimated revenue potential from the project is approximately Rs 1,200 crore. It is a 100 per cent owned project,” the presentation said.
Established in 2010, Godrej Properties has successfully delivered around 22 million square feet of real estate in the past five years. It currently has around 192 million square feet of developable area in 86 projects across India.
Besides the four major focus cities, the company has presence in Chennai, Kolkata, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh and Nagpur.
