PBEL To Invest Rs 25 Crore In IT

Realty biggie of Southern India, PBEL, which is a syndicate of two Israeli firms, Property and Building Corporation and Electra Real Estate and Hyderabad-based Incor Infrastructure, plans to invest about Rs 25 crore in its upcoming billion-dollar project in the Indian real estate market. The company has big plans, with proposals to develop the $ 1 Billion project on a 28-acre patch located in Hyderabad. Biztech2.0 caught up with Anand Reddy, Executive Director – PBEL, to talk about the role of IT in PBEL’s big plans.

How mature is the realty industry for technical adoption?

So far the realty industry hasn’t been organised very professionally. Most of the operations happen in a very unstructured manner. However times are changing and many new developments are taking place. It is not only the voluminous growth in the real estate industry, but the interface with the more sophisticated IT industry – which is our primary target sector, increased volume of real estate business with malls etc has made it mandatory for enterprises in this sector to adopt technology. Today, there wouldn’t be a mall without a PVR and there wouldn’t be a PVR without online ticketing facility. Ninety percent of the players do not have an IT plan. They work more on reactive basis. This has to change because no one can rely solely on manpower for scaling up.

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Take for instance, PBEL, initially when we started off we were operating only in a two lakh square feet area, so most of the management issues were handled manually. But now we have grown and are now working to build up an area of 1 crore square feet in three years time, with plans to build 3500 apartments. Ensuring transparency and efficiency in a project of this scale is a huge challenge. We are compelled to focus heavily on IT for seamless operation of these projects. We embarked upon solutions like Building Management System that has, for example, a water switch that has an automated controller, provides data on usage of water, required capacity to meet the demand etc. Apart from this, PBEL is a global company with offices across the globe and we need to stay connected to all our counterparts on a 24/7 basis.

What percentage of your Rs. 2500 crore investment will be for IT and in which areas of operations are you using IT?

Well, IT constitutes about 1% of the total project size, which is about Rs 25 crore. Currently we are evaluating ERP solutions like SAP, InfoVelocity and IMT Build; for all our project sites that can handle executives, HR, finance; and put them together in a common place where we can tie up things together. Our Hyderabad office is completely Wifi enabled. This is primarily because our target audiences are employees of the BFSI, IT and Airlines sector who are already deeply exposed to technology.

Apart from this we have also automated a lot of our filed activities, where I as the head can monitor sales based on online projections, monitor demand, how much I want to offload at a higher price etc. Apart from this we are also using File manager, which helps us coordinate with consultants across UK, US, Europe and Bangalore. Consultants can access internal files with the help of file system share manager. We are currently using an internal file server. There is no software that automates file sharing, I think we need that soon.

What kind of solutions will be ideal for realty industry?

I think a heterogeneous environment is what will do the trick, an environment where Linux, Unix or Windows can co-exist. We strongly believe Windows cannot solve all our problems. For instance though MS Exchange could be helpful only till a certain point, after that it starts slowing down that’s when Unix can help in scaling up business though Unix, too, comes with a number of manageability issues. So there has to be a judicious mix and match. For instance the designers at PBEL are using Apple mac machines give better and higher quality resolution compared to Windows. However in our Mysore office, due to the smaller size of the office and non critical IT needs we are using Linux machines and saving heavily on the license fee we would have to pay if we were to use Windows machines.

How do you deal with connectivity issues in remote sites?

As of now we have equipped all our engineers with laptops and data cards from Tata Indicom and Reliance, so that they are always connected. For high-end connection requirements we use BSNL that has quite a good reach in the interiors of India.

What is your technology roadmap for 2008?

Our priority area is implementing ERP, MS projects and ensure that all our employees are connected. My IT wish list is getting free internet connectivity for domestic users.