Cladding is viewed as an aesthetic upgrade

Dr Prashanth Reddy, Managing Director, FunderMax India, shares more on the cladding industry, its demand drivers and challenges faced.Tell us about the current market scenario and major growth drivers in the cladding segment.Major drivers include government schemes like affordable housing, Real-Estate Regulatory Act, Real-Estate Investment Trust and Goods & Services Tax. These regulatory reforms slowed growth initially as all the stakeholders were taking time to reorganise themselves. However, the market has now reached a steady state and is slowly growing owing to other favourable factors like rapid urbanisation, smart cities, metro connectivity and affordable housing loans. The real-estate market in India is projected to reach a CAGR of 11.2 per cent by FY2020. The residential segment contributes to 80 per cent of overall real-estate development in the country. With increase in the buying power of consumers, there is definite potential for the cladding segment. Commercial and corporate buildings now seek certified products and prefer green-rated buildings with innovative designs. This will significantly increase the demand for new and efficient facades.What is trending in terms of cladding for infra projects and how are these trends reflected in your recent launches?Commercial buildings consume more energy than highways and roads, according to the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC). Hence, there is a growing need for the use of green cladding solutions in buildings to address this crisis.  FunderMax provides a rain screen, rear ventilation façade system. It is installed on substructures leaving ample space between the panel and wall, thus improving heat and noise reduction while offering better weather protection. It improves thermal efficiency and reduces thermal bridges to avoid condensation of water vapour. In a segment that primarily comprises organised players, what challenges do you foresee and how do you plan to overcome them?The Indian market is price-sensitive and cladding is still viewed as an aesthetic upgrade rather than a functional element. While architects are already using many modern materials, many end-users are now slowly exploring sustainable and easy-to-maintain facades. Organised players dominate market share but there are many fake promoters in the unorganised market who sell counterfeit products under established brand names. One of the key differentiators of FunderMax is that there are 116 different types of décor and 30,000 SKUs, which give a high degree of design freedom to architects while adding character to buildings. As a strategy, we will bring in further differentiation by being a complete solutions provider with the experience of completing over 11,000 projects, a good engineering team and 44 trained business partners.- DIKSHA JAWLE