Helping people build their dream homes

A civil engineer from Nagercoil, who turned entrepreneur, T. Chitty Babu, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Akshaya, has helped realise the dreams of thousands of home buyers. He brings passion and commitment to the job, and three decades of work experience. 

He has also given his employees a chance to rise and grow within the company. Starting his career as a site supervisor, he rose to be chairman, with hard work and no compromise on quality. Excerpts from an interview.

The name comes from ‘Akshaya Paatram’, a vessel that provides unlimited food and prosperity, is eternal and grows. ‘Ever giving’ signifies giving not only to the company, but to all its stakeholders. Whoever buys anything from Akshaya should grow. 

The customer has to be prosperous as he needs to succeed in life. When we construct homes we want to put our minds and souls along with our value system into them. Being a civil engineer, building was my passion. When we entered the real estate industry in 1995, it was unorganised in terms of business — choosing a property and designing it was difficult. In 1995, I started Akshaya Structurals, and three years later, Akshaya Homes, a development company. Our journey continues.

When we wanted a brand identity, our brand designer appointed an agency, and after a six-month study among stakeholders, including home buyers in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Trichy, they found that home buyers said we never ‘compromise’. This was a word they used repeatedly in the sample study from which the team coined the term ‘Uncompromise’. 

If we want to continue the business in the right format, then we should look at processes, political systems, governance and also the approval system in the country to survive and ensure future growth. A person has to get at least 58 approvals from various agencies, this being common across India. With this kind of system, we launch a project with all approvals after 1.5 to 2 years: so look at the bank interest we incur. We want a single window clearance. 

Chennai has the advantage of being the safest environment for investments. Chennai has good infrastructure compared to other neighbouring states; road infrastructure is good, public transport is good and healthcare is the best in the country. Businesses come to Chennai for readily available infrastructure and the port. But we need to have a better master plan and a better urban infrastructure to grow as urbanisation is advancing rapidly. 

In 2005-06, Akshaya was the first to move to OMR; then other developers followed suit. We have a separate market study group which recommended GST Road, so we moved there. Our next focus is Sriperumbudur as it is growing, Oragadam corridor has potential. North Chennai is going to be a big opener, and many projects will soon come up there. It has good, wide roads with readily available infrastructure, Metro water connectivity and availability of a sewage system. It is infrastructure left behind by the British and not fully used because development had already taken place with a ground plus one structure. Redevelopment is yet to occur.

In mechanical and electrical industries, training can happen within four walls. But the challenge in the real estate sector is that if a person wants to get complete knowledge he needs to be with us right from the start of the project to its end. The curriculum available today does not address several issues in the industry. We need more practical components. We are working closely with universities to ensure that new aspects are covered in the curriculum.