Commercial realty on a new high, says ASF Infra

Anil Saraf
CMD, ASF Group 
Talks to Girja Shankar Kaura 

With MNCs such as TCS, Ericsson and IBM as its clients and a diverse portfolio consisting of over 3 million sq ft of residential, IT and commercial infrastructure, ASF Infrastructure has established itself as one of the leading real estate developers in the NCR region. Anil Saraf, CMD, ASF Group, talks about realty scenario in the NCR region.

Q. What has been the growth graph of ASF Group?

A. ASF Group was incorporated in 2004 with a mission to create benchmark by offering customised solutions in the sphere of commercial real estate. Over the past decade, ASF has grown tremendously as an organisation and has established its footprint in northern India by completing a number of projects leased to MNCs in IT/ITeS and services sectors. 

Q. What has been the key inspiration behind developing SEZ zone where most of the developers have backed off?

A. India’s growing services sector and the need to provide world-class infrastructure to cater to the ever growing need of the sector was the primary motivation behind the development of our SEZ. This project has been envisioned as an integrated, self-contained and green development having superior infrastructure with world-class amenities.

Q. What is the current commercial real estate scenario in NCR? What are the key growth drivers in that space?

A. The commercial real estate is on a new high in India, characterised by rising demand and high absorption. Notwithstanding the current mismatch in demand and supply, resulting in tightening of prices, the market with coming supply boom is headed towards greater stability in the future. 

Heightened migration in the past couple of decades has led to a phenomenal growth not only in metros but also in the suburban areas adjacent to the metros. It is believed that by 2015, 61% of office space in India will be located in the suburbs. The commercial office sector witnessed about 20.4 million sq ft of Grade A supply across the top eight cities during January-September 2014, an increase of 9% over the corresponding period a year ago.

IT/ITeS sector has been a dominant performer, contributing a major share of leasing volume while retail, consulting, e-commerce, manufacturing and industrial sectors have also shown good traction of late.

Q. What are your current projects and the ones that you are planning in the near future?

A. ASF, in association with JP Morgan, is developing an IT sector-specific SEZ project at Gurgaon, namely ASF Insignia. The project will offer high quality infrastructure and a hassle-free work environment in the form of an integrated campus, having a cluster of processing spaces for technology companies, and also the non-IT usage spaces. This is a pre-certified gold rated green development, and has access to a dedicated 66 KVA grid power, 24x7 backup power, water and waste management systems, shuttle service to nearest metro station, etc.

Q. Are the Budget proposals in line with your expectations and will those lead to the revival of demand in the sector?

A. The Finance Minister’s first full Budget provides a road map for realising India’s growth potential and fosters the much-needed consolidation to infrastructure.

Taking cue from the Union government’s emphasis on growth and development, we can expect the RBI to have more room for lowering the interest rates. A combination of tax incentives and lower home loan rates will surely give a much-needed fillip to the real estate sector. Rationalisation of capital gains tax regime for REITs is also a welcome move, which will provide more investment opportunities to people having disposable incomes. 

Monetisation of gold is another positive step, which will enable investors to monetise their investments in gold and seek other investment avenues, including by way of real estate. The only disappointment is that the housing sector has not been accorded infrastructure status, which, we hope will come by surely, sooner than later.