HDFC, Mahindra venture for real estate services

By Our Special Correspondent

MUMBAI, MARCH 27. HDFC and Mahindra group today announced a joint venture to provide the entire range of real estate services through the interactive medium of Internet. The joint venture, Propertymartindia Ltd, will launch its web-backed operations with a `click & mortar' strategy using the vast network of the HDFC branches and supplemented by a network of vendors and service providers.

The website, www.propertymartindia.com, launched in Mumbai and Chennai today and would soon cover all the major cities in India.

This will offer the extended reach of the Internet as well as converge with human interface and personalised service. The initial capital of the company is Rs. 10 crores.

Announcing this here today, Mr. Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC, said ``After a long wait the real estate market appears to have more or less bottomed out across the country, with prices showing signs of firming up. Given the rapid advancement of technology, we thought that the portal would be an appropriate stepping stone to the ultimate objective of web based real estate transactions.''

The endeavour of this site would be to simplify the tedious process that one has to go through while acquiring or selling a property. Said Mr. Parekh, ``This would primarily be achieved by providing the customer a wide range of properties at one stop and also advising them on various aspects of real estate like legal, technical, help on architects, interior designers etc.''

Propertymartindia.com will adopt the dual strategy of matching web-technology with the real world network to provide total guidance to the real estate buyers and sellers.

According to Mr. Parekh this is a proactive response to the needs of the highly fragmented and often disorganised real estate market in India that makes the process of buying and selling of property a cumbersome task, which is characterised by a lack of trust and transparency.

HDFC stated that Propertymartindia will bring in greater transparency in the real estate market through the creation of an electronic market place and it will also provide trustworthy professional services and competency of HDFC to the real estate customer and will assist the customer at every step of the process.

Speaking at the launch, Mr. Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Information Technology Services, said, ``Our group is focussed towards the use of technology to provide greater convenience to customers and HDFC with its expertise in real estate makes an ideal partner for this venture.''

He further added, ``our expertise in IT solutions, our understanding of the Internet customer psyche and our ability to incubate Internet start-ups are matched with the huge understanding of the real estate business and customer goodwill that HDFC brings to this venture.''

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Business
Previous : DaimlerChrysler buys stake in Mitsubishi
Next     : Textile unit, a drag on KICL performance