From Rs 10,000 to Rs 350 cr: Akshaya's decision to construct green buildings has paid off

Growing up in the 1970s in a quiet, little town tucked away in the southernmost tip of India, tall buildings were a rarity for me. At Nagercoil, near Kanyakumari, the tallest building I knew of was the clock tower. It fascinated me and I knew I wanted to design and construct big buildings for a career. However, since I came from a humble background, I had to take the longer route to achieve my dream. It took eight years and a long run at the corporate carousel before I got around to starting the first project under my banner, Akshaya Limited.


After completing my five-year civil engineering degree programme from SIT Tumkur, I joined Dual Structurals Private Limited as first engineer, in 1987. I worked for the construction company for the next six years, eventually being promoted to director in 1993. However, two years on, boredom set in and I was itching to do something new. A comfortable job was no longer good enough as I was still working on someone else’s ideas and there was no challenge in terms of creativity. So I quit my job and, in October 1995, I started Akshaya with a seed capital of Rs 10,000.

It is a myth that one needs to have deep pockets to enter the realty market. I had already established a network of contacts during my previous job, so credibility and workflow were never a problem. To keep things simple at the outset, I took on the role of a contractor. Interested parties would entrust me with projects with a clearly specified budget and timeline.

It was my responsibility to get the architect, engineers, raw material, and the like, and the amount I saved was my commission. I hired just one employee, a civil engineer, to help me while my wife pitched in with book-keeping. My first project was worth Rs 2 crore and I made a handsome profit. By the end of March 1996, I had already started working on four projects and the profits enabled me to move the company headquarters from my house to a rented office at Adyar.

Another misconception is that the realty sector is full of problems. I can vouch for the fact that as long as you take up projects you are sure of executing in the given time and budget, it is as easy or difficult as any other venture. Also, one needs to give every business some time to grow—it took a year for my company’s revenues to hit the Rs 1 crore mark. It was not until October 1998 that I attempted to go beyond playing the contractor by taking on my first independent project, that of developing four apartments. I invested Rs 55 lakh in this venture. It was small change compared with the projects that I had handled in the past, but it was a start and there has been no looking back ever since.

Here’s another tip for realty entrepreneurs: guard against the temptation to spread out too soon. I am not against ventures in different geographical locations, but one must first master the area one starts out from. Thankfully, for Akshaya, there has been a lot of scope for growth in Tamil Nadu. Over the past 14 years, we have ventured into various cities within the state, from Coimbatore and Salem to Madurai and Trichy. It is a market that I understand and we have been able to execute more than 150 projects in the state so far. Between 1995 and 1998, I took on contractor roles for projects in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh too, but the self-developed projects have been limited to Tamil Nadu so far.