Comparison of cities and My take on Real Estate in India

While I am settling in Delhi, I keep comparing it with Mumbai and Hyderabad. While Hyderabad is my hometown, Mumbai is a city I liked a lot. I have spent first week of June at Mumbai and then moved to Delhi, so I've some recent Mumbai experience that I can use for comparison.

If I have to say it in short, it will be like this - Delhi is comparable to Hyderabad in terms of weather, locality, attitude of people etc and is comparable to Mumbai (atleast Navi Mumbai) in terms of cost of living, diversity of people, footpath business etc. What Delhi lacks is the attitude of Mumbaikars. Despite having smaller roads, heavy rains and many other problems, Mumbai people live on and are very nice. You would see innovation in everything at Mumbai and the quality of things is much better in Mumbai. People are quite aggressive and proud in Delhi but they are not better in anyway when compared to people in Hyderabad. You can observe these things with the Autowallahs, rentals agents, house owners, craftsmen, bank employees, bus conductors and drivers. Mumbai people are highly efficient and always focus on getting things done quickly while Delhi guys talk big but do little.

I have been disappointed by the service I get despite paying premium, which is comparable to what I would pay in Mumbai. At this cost I get much better service in Mumbai. Hyderabad, on the other hand, is slowly moving towards Delhi in the sense that all the service providers started demanding premium without improving the service in anyway. In Mumbai you atleast get better service. Hyderbadis are known to be laid back people but because of IT and ITes boom, things are getting expensive in Hyderabad.

One unrelated but nevertheless serious one is about the real estate scenario in India. I was going through the Knowledge at Wharton's latest article and felt that Indian Real estate has gone through very similar cycle with certain minor exceptions and excesses. While the Indian financial sector has not gone as far as US guys did due to various reasons including market not being fully developed, they followed their US counterparts in many things. They have been overlending beyond the normal limit of 80% but inflating the property value. The cap rate in India is quite high compared to any other similar market making it vulnerable for a fall. But there is a significant difference between US and Indian cultures that would not allow a big crisis to happen here. First Indians believe in lifetime employment and generally wouldn't leave jobs in difficult time. Though most of the service sector jobs are dependent on global market, predominantly US, these firms are trying hard to diversify and they are still competitive despite talks about US recession and weak dollar. Indian non-services sector has also been going global particularly non-US, which can insulate it to certain extent from US recession.

But as the interest rates go up, and new job creation slowing down, there will be pressure on rentals and new real estate purchases, which would lead to drop in property prices. While most of the deals that are underway may sail safely, some may have to face rough weather. New deals would be delayed and may not happen at previously projected figures and this would be first indication of the change.

I have been an investor in the real estate and though I see property rates coming down, I don't foresee loosing much as I have entered it 3 years back. But those entering now or have entered in the last two years will see some erosion in value.

While most of India will be able to manage slight slowdown and would be happy inflation coming down, there is a limit to what it can handle.

All these developments hint at a grim situation, which can only change if the political forces join hands with the intellectuals and don't get carried away into any one path too deep. Patience, prudence and judgment are required. I hope the Man of India comes up with some magic and save us all.

Hyderabad, Mera pyaara Hyderabad

My association with Hyderabad has been a long one. I started my schooling here but had to go back to my native place due to a unfortunate event. But I came back again in 1983 to Hyderabad and joined United High School, which is non-existent today. I studied in that school till 8th class and then moved to Unique Public School now known as Unique High School.

Hyderabad was quite different in those days. It used to be dry and hot during summers but rains came pretty quickly. Whenever there used to be a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal it used to rain continuously for a week or so but it was more of a drizzle rather than heavy downpour. There used to be few kirana and general stores and one or two medical shops in the IDPL colony area. Ration Shop or the Fair Price Distribution Shop was an important part of life apart from the lending library that I used to visit almost everyday.

We used to play cricket everywhere as there was so much open space. My travel into the city was either to the railway station at secunderabad or to the bus station at gowliguda to travel to my native place and that usually happened in the summer. But then after I finished my schooling things took a dramatic turn. The student general bus pass was such a boon in those days. You pay about 32 bucks and you can travel on any bus at any time free of cost. It was during this time that I explored Hyderabad as much as possible. Me and my friends used to go to Afzalgunj or Chikkadpally to visit the Central Library. Books always were my good friends and always gave hope that there are great things somewhere and you will get to experience them someday.

Many times when we had no classes we used to stand in the bus stop and based on the route of the bus that comes first we used to choose between a movie or library. I managed to see all the bond movies during this time. Telugu movies were considered only they were big hits or were directed by Ramgopal Varma, Maniratnam etc or were of heroes like Chiru and Nag. Hindi movies were rare and of the few I remember Khalnayak and Baazigar were the best.

Life suddenly changed with job and the routine changed totally. I got into the book collection hobby in a big way during the first two years of my career. I even got myself photographed with the books standing on my side - hehehe. My first visit outside Andhra Pradesh was to Mumbai. My good friend Jeelani Basha was with me and we enjoyed that trip so much. We were attending a training program at Voltas, Thane and we stayed in a hotel near VT, which is now known as CST. I liked Mumbai so much for everything it is, it's such an interesting place but I liked Hyderabad much more. Hyderabad is a relaxed, warm, calm and laid back city but Mumbai is a place where everything and everyone is in some urgency. It's about 3 years since I went to Mumbai and I am sure nothing much have changed in the main city.

There are lot of things that are quite Hyderabadi, which you can find only in Hyderabad, in my profile - My school and college, Bakelite Hylam, Middle Earth, Ivy Comptech and Sierra and finally ISB. If ISB opens second campus at Mohali then it is a different story but as of now ISB still is exclusive to Hyderabad.

This move is the most significant one but I'm looking forward to it mainly because two of my good friends are in Delhi

A conversation between an ISB aspirant and a round one admit, part 1

While I was preparing for GMAT and again while I was writing my essays, ISB student blogs were the only source of inspiration for me. I specifically searched for blog posts that can give me some clues about what goes on in the minds of applicants and what their decision making process could. Though I started writing this blog for more general purposes, I have realized that most people would read this bolog for similar information that I have searched for earlier. Few time I though that may be I should post in detail the whole process but again felt that it would be too mechanical or even technical as I felt that most of my emotions have faded away.

Only way I relive them is when someone asks me my view. That gives me an opportunity to relook at the reasons why I think I got admission. Yesterday I have recieved a mail from Mr. Raj. As soon as I saw the mail I immediately replied to him in detail and towards the end got an idea that may I can post the conversation on this blog. I request his permission to post his part of the conversation to which he agreed readily. Below is the mail sent by Raj. The next post is my reply. I have written the mail as a reaction, therefore I have not done any re-writing or structuring and I hope that this post to a great extent reflects my thinking.
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from raj ch Feb 20 (13 hours ago)
to kiran.aalla@gmail.com date Feb 20, 2007 9:05 PM
subject Hey kiran ... Can you pls suggest me dude mailed-by gmail.com

Sup Kiran !!
This is Raj Ch . I am working in USA (IT) . I am seroiusly planing for an entry into ISB 2009-2010 batch.

I know its a long way to go , but Ya want to start of preparing for GMAT.

I have some Q's that i think u will answer .

My undergrad was in ECE( I worked for 6 months as a TSR in DELL coz my project was minute and we finished in just 1.5 months) and then I went to Australia ( MS in Microelectronics , I worked in a call center her as well but it was into client relations operation team/Lead) and then Now in USA( workign as a business Analyst)

I just started a small consulting firm and I have some huge plans in the coming 3-4 years.

first up do u think I have a chance ?? secondly is IT a hedge to get through ?? and finally GMAT ( I guess I need to score around 740 to get through aint it??) Your help is greatly appreciated ..

Ciao~
Raj Ch

ISB Hyderabad Admits meet

Yesterday we had a ISB Hyderabad R1 and R2 admits. There were about 18 admits but I fell there are another 5 to 10 who couldn't make it yesterday.

It was suppposed to start at 6:00PM and I reached there at 5:30 to meet my collegaue from Ivy before the meet starts. To my surpirse I already found four of them already there. Sravanthi, as the organizer of this meet obviously took it seriously and made a lot of effort to see that everything is smooth.

This colleague of mine, Rajender, was in Technical recruiting at Ivy and during the 15 months he was there, he worked on niche requirements and achieved very good success. After the Ivy saga, he has decided to start on his own and try his luck. These days techincal recruiting is highly attractive and rewarding, if you do it right. He wants to try it for three months and assess where he is going. He is also looking for a B-school admission after two to three years.

Coming to meet four of us from the original Hyderbad group - Sravanthi, Arun, Gajanan and me, were there. Apart from us, Sireesha - International applicant, Nidhi, Gowri, Ashish, Jagan, Ratnakar, Karthik, Arjun, Saujanya (R2 waiting for the result), Sumithi, Senthil, Anand and Gaurav were present. I have posted the pictures on the ISB class of 2008 blog - http://isbclassof2008.blogspot.com/. Just now I have realised that I missed posting one of the picture, which i will post in the evening.

It was a completely diverse group with people from IT, Auto, insurance, petroleum, finance, and pharma. Everyone enjoyed and one of the R2 admit who was indecisive at the beginning about accepting the admission decided to accept by the end of the meet. Such was the energy and enthusiasm.

We had multiple rounds of intros as people were coming late and we had to start again and again. People at CCD started wondering what is going on as we shuffled the whole coffe day thrice and occupied almost 1/2 of the space. Someone enquired if it was a bloggers meet :)

The meet definitely pumped in lot of energy into all of us.