Mumbai-centric Rustomjee Group to mark a foray outside city 

Mumbai-based Residential property developer Rustomjee Group will announce its first foray outside of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), a top official from the group said.

The group has developed properties in Mumbai for the luxury and uber luxury category spread across south and central parts of the city and western suburbs.  

Speaking to BusinessLine, Boman Irani, Chairman and Managing Director, Rustomjee Group said, “There is a strong foray towards another vertical that would make us step outside the boundaries of MMR. We are MMR-focussed developer because there is a greater depth to the market and we can continue to be one of the leaders in this market and create the right products.”

“There is an opportunity that would take us to other places. Not that we have tried to look away from that, we have worked but never had the ability to get to a new market.” Irani added.

The group announced projects in Virar and Thane which became the first of its projects that took it outside of the Mumbai city. It has 10 residential projects under it and one commercial property.

While Rustomjee has focussed mostly on residential projects, it is now exploring commercial projects as well.

“Our focus on Mumbai will be on the mid luxury the uber luxury category. As part of our larger developments we are always doing some social and rentable commercial projects. The market will hear an announcement by June-July after getting the approvals for 1 million sqft,” Irani added.

Input costs

Owing to an increase of 40-45 per cent in the cost of raw materials, the Maharashtra unit of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India (CREDAI) warned that construction activities will have to be halted temporarily.

Prices of steel, cement, bricks, sand, wash sand, electrical wires, fittings, tiles, pipes, sanitary-ware, fabrication, secondary minerals and others, have increased by around 40-45 per cent and that the present impact on input costs is about ₹400-600 per sq ft, CREDAI added.  

“Cost of inputs have gone up substantially. Places like Mumbai are able to absorb the impact but Virar and Thane is where the pinch is huge. There is not enough cushion in the rest of the price basket. We are already 7-8 per cent higher than 2021,” Irani added.

Financial performance

Rustomjee Group is an unlisted and privately held company. While it does not disclose its financial performance, Irani said that the company has always been profitable by keeping itself asset light and by reducing debt. It has managed to bring down debt to one-third compared to July 2019.

“We have always been a profitable company. Our entry into SRA (slum rehabilitation), MHADA projects or building redevelopments or even land purchases have been through joint ventures or development agreement. We have kept ourselves light so that our return on investments is always high. Our profit margins will not increase this year but they would have been uptick from last two years. Many ready inventories have been sold and debt is down too. Some new launches have received phenomenal response,” Irani added.  

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