Making homes also ‘Civil Service'

Sanjeev Srivastva is a man on a mission. He doesn’t have the wherewithal yet to change the landscape of Bihar, the poor state where he hails from. But he is dreaming of changing the skyline of capital Patna with a new 5-star hotel. You can’t miss the glint in his eyes when he says his first hotel will come up next to Maurya, Patna’s lone big hotel which has stood the test of time while the state’s economy crumbled all around. “But Bihar is changing now. I want to be a part of it,” Srivastva adds.

The 42-year-old founder and MD of real estate firm Assotech started out with civil contracting business after completing his B Tech in civil engineering from National Institute of Technology, Calicut in 1986.

The traditional Bihari family wasn’t amused. They would have wanted him to become a civil servant like his father. “But I never wanted to become a government servant. I always listened to my inner voice,” Srivastva says, recounting his journey as a businessman. Obtaining finance was near impossible for a young entrepreneur those days. So, Srivastva borrowed

Rs 50,000 from friends. “I had to overcome many hurdles before getting the first contract of a vanaspati factory near Badayun,” he says. During that time, Srivastva executed a few road and bridge projects. The first big project came in 1992 when he developed a 40-mtr building in Noida. “That was when I made my first million,” he says.

The road traversed was full of obstacles. With established players like Omaxe and Ansals around, survival was tough. “One needed strong influence to get even a small-size contract,” he explains.
True. Srivastva’s firm began to bag many large projects including one for Kajaria Ceramics. His big moment came in 1997 when he got to develop a housing project near Noida. The move came in when the state government started awarding infrastructure projects to smaller private players. By 2003, when the real estate sector began to pick up, Assotech bagged bigger projects.

Today, he is building what’s so far the tallest residential building—at 121 mtr—in NCR. With an investment of Rs 250 crore, the building will come with a helipad and a glass-walled swimming pool on top—all designed to appeal to premium buyers. “We are creating an identity for Noida by developing this building, which should come up in about two years,” says Srivastva. His Rs 220 crore firm is now working on projects worth Rs 1,000 crore—in hospitality, residential, IT and corporate spaces. These include hotels and townships across the country.