- Uzma Irfan, Director, Prestige Group Prestige Group, one of the leading real-estate developers in the country, has a legacy of over three decades in real-estate development. It has diversified business models across the residential, office, retail, and hospitality segments with operations in 12 key locations in India. The group has completed 247 projects with a developable area of 134 million sq ft and has 45 ongoing projects across segments, with a total developable area of 52 million sq ft. Further, it has 57 million sq ft under planning and holds a land bank with a potential developable area of over 27 million sq ft. Uzma Irfan, Director, Prestige Group, shares more....Major challenge faced in FY2019-20 and the company’s approach to it: The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges most of us have faced in our lifetime, let alone in the last fiscal. To overcome it, we started following stringent protocols of safety and hygiene across all our properties. We have also started focusing on promotions online, including virtual site tours, online bookings, etc, as we realised people were unable to visit our properties as easily as they could earlier. For less tech-savvy clients, we help them with site tours over a video call to make things easier. At Prestige, realising that the pressing need of the hour is to first protect unregistered labourers, we started providing daily wagers at all our labour colonies across India with the basic needs of the hour, namely food, water, sanitation, monthly provisions and medical kits.Biggest contributor to the company’s growth in FY2020: In 2019, the Prestige Group completed projects covering 24.2 million sq ft, including 19 million sq ft of residential space and 5.2 million sq ft office space. We had almost zero vacancy in our commercial properties last year. We ventured into new markets like Mumbai and the NCR in the residential as well as commercial space. We got into strategic collaborations in the hospitality segment—with DB Group to build India’s largest hotel and convention centre at Aero City in Delhi, and with Marriott International to develop six hotels across India. With these partnerships, we sealed our position as one of the largest hospitality players in India.Plans for growth in FY2020-21 amid the uncertainties the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about: We have already resumed construction work across our ongoing developments and will also be launching some properties virtually in the next few weeks. We were fortunate to witness sales even during the lockdown period, thus reinforcing our belief that serious homebuyers will continue to invest in brands they trust, and know will deliver against all odds. We are also witnessing increased interest from NRIs who have started realising the importance of having suitable real-estate investments in India. Further, we have started investing more in terms of technology, promotions, etc, online as we realise that in the post-COVID world, that is the way forward. Prestige Estates Projects Total Income EBITDA Reported PAT FY20 (Rs billion) 82.43 24.74 5.45 Growth over FY19 (%) 56 58.0 23.7