Management Speak – Nirupa

“ If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. ”

– Issac Newton

Nirupa Shankar
Jt. Managing Director, Brigade Group

Our Chairman has always been the “giant” whose shoulders we have stood on and we are forever in awe of his visionary foresight, business acumen, attention to detail and leadership with a heart. The markets are buoyant post COVID-19 and the markets are hot.

Office
The office vertical has been resilient despite the uncertain work from home (WFH), work from anywhere (WFA) and various hybrid policies by the MNCs. Office parks had an occupancy of just 10% in January 2022. It steadily increased by 5% each month to reach around 60% by October 2022. However, with the feelers of an impending recession in the United States and Europe, companies tightened their belts and went a little slow on their new office leasing plans. The upcoming Development of Enterprises and Services Hub (DESH) bill, once passed should help catalyse our leasing efforts for our SEZ projects.

Retail
Retail consumption in our malls showed massive improvement.There was close to 40% increase in the sales of April to September 2022 when compared with the same period the previous year. Family entertainment centres and theatres did extremely well. The PVR at Orion Mall, Brigade Gateway had the best performance across all PVRs in the country. It is encouraging to see family and children come back to the malls in a big way and we are excited to show them a good time over Christmas with fun celebrations and events planned.

Hospitality
Brigade’s hospitality business continues to grow with an all-round improvement in our numbers, with both our topline and bottom-line registering higher than pre-COVID Q2 levels. Our revenues touched 120% and our AGOP reached 140% of the pre-COVID levels for the same time period. Even though international business travel has resumed completely, hotels were filled with local demand business from Weddings and the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) sector.

Proptech
A passion project of ours has been the Brigade Real Estate Accelerator Program (REAP), Asia’s first Real Estate tech accelerator that was launched in October 2016 with the vision to address challenges faced by the real estate industry by curating bestin-class tech startups and getting them business ready. Over the last 6 years we have evaluated more than 3000 startups and mentored over 60 disruptive companies, adding significant value not only to the built world, but to the environment as well.

As part of our thought leadership initiatives in this sector, we hosted Propagate on the 29th of November to bring together industry thought leaders, key influencers and startups to inspire each other and propose SMART (Sustainable, Measurable, Accessible, Relevant, Time-bound) solutions with concrete outcomes and facilitate the sharing of ideas, unlocking opportunities for growth.

We are aware that for any change to be adopted at a rapid pace and to make a difference, we need the collective Intellect and resources of every stakeholder in the industry. We were excited to receive over 500 registrations from leaders in the PropTech ecosystem including startups, VCs, developers, incubators, accelerators and academia. We witnessed some very engaging and thought-provoking discussions focused on the role that technology plays in enabling smart infrastructure for a better tomorrow.

The summit was a great initiative to strengthen the ecosystem in PropTech and bringing change that the industry needs. It was truly encouraging to see a room full of PropTech enthusiasts, founders, thought leaders and industry stalwarts inspiring change. We finish the year excited with what the future holds. The elevation to Jt. MD comes with a large share of responsibility, but also with a renewed sense of purpose and energy for how much we can do with it.