# Will Owning Land Save You When AI Takes Over?

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Varun Mayya
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo
- **Дата:** 23.06.2025
- **Длительность:** 54:54
- **Просмотры:** 172,553

## Описание

In the age of digital abundance, where code, content, and even labour can be automated using AI… what’s left for humans that’s truly scarce? Land.

In this episode, we sit down with Ajitesh Kurupulu, second-generation real estate developer and founder of ASBL, to explore why real estate might become the backbone of the post-AI economy.

We talk about how as white-collar jobs get automated and robotics threaten blue-collar jobs, real estate might become one of the few asset classes AI can’t replicate or replace. We also challenge some of the loudest financial advices out there “Is renting really smarter than buying? What do billionaires understand about land that influencers miss? And why is Indian real estate still so chaotic despite decades of reform?” We then get into why GenZ can’t afford houses and what they can do about it, how to evaluate real estate using public data and AI tools, the myth of endless stock market growth vs. land appreciation, and why consistent policy (not just ambition) builds real cities.

If you’re someone in their 20s interested in the post-AI world, and how to prepare yourself for the shift… this podcast is for you.

00:00 - Intro
01:00 - Automation, Jobs, and Land as the Ultimate Asset
04:51 - Ajitesh’s Background and Entry into Real Estate
10:08 - Buying vs. Renting Real Estate
15:54 - Understanding Real Estate Investment Math
21:55 - Investment Strategy in an Automated World
25:18 - Costs and Realities of Urban vs. Rural Land
28:29 - Predicting Land Prices with Urban Economics
31:07 - Growth Potential of North Bangalore
38:57 - Importance of Real Estate Aesthetics
46:44 - Contrarian Insight: "Don't Buy Land"
48:58 - ASBL’s Operations and Expansion Goals
50:40 - Hyderabad vs. Bangalore Real Estate Comparison

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo) Intro

change. In America, bankers and India builders are not respected, right? We are always the, you know, at least in your movies, we and politicians are always the gundas. So, when you buy your first house, it is wiser to buy something smaller, something you can afford, something you can pay off the loans off. One simple fact what I would always tell customers is if whatever your loan amount is, 1/3 to 40% maximum of your uh whatever monthly earnings should go to your EMI. I find that thought very scary. You're giving away one/ird of your earnings to this and then you're taking a 20 30 year ADMI. question especially with AI coming I don't even know if I'm going to have a job in like 10 years take a look at 20078 pay the developers who are number one number two in the country a lot of them are bankrupt today because the government's changed then the next set of government came with different rules I'm not telling this government is bad or that government is bad but what I'm saying is if you need better quality of life you need consistent policy give me one insight you have that nobody in real estate believes you on like something that you're completely taking the opposite chance to your industry Ladies and gentlemen, we have another

### [1:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=60s) Automation, Jobs, and Land as the Ultimate Asset

podcast for you today and today I'm with Ajitesh Kurupulu. He runs Ashoka Builders and there's a reason I have you here which is that and we were discussing this offline. 200 plus billion dollars in 2025 of India's exports are going to be IT exports. Mhm. And the question is not about when. if but the question is when all of this gets automated. Mhm. The debate is it going to get automated in one year? 5 years? Is it going to get automated in 20 years? Nobody knows. But we do know it's going to happen in our lifetime or at least even if not complete automation, it's going to be a thinning of the you know force. Mhm. So the question and the reason I have you here is because I've been studying what comes after automation because it's not the automation is not going to hit engineers like me only. It's going to hit everyone who uses a computer. Eventually when robotics come it's going to hit everyone that drives a car. does any work with their hands with any labor. Right? So it's an question of when and not if. Mhm. So I think that as I was studying this I realized that there are two systems right? The first system is capitalism the other system is socialism. I feel like both are incompatible with the future that's coming. But there's a third system and this entire system uh this is practiced in Europe back in the day. It's called feudalism where everything was centered around land. Because it turns out that while AI can definitely create havoc on the stock market, it can certainly change uh you know which new competitor wins because they're now using you know these cost advantages that come from AI. Um AI cannot create new land. Mhm. Right. And you know maybe there there'll be 200 300 years later there'll be a way for AI to create new planets or terapform new planets but that's not happening anytime soon. Mhm. So I am very bullish on the idea of buying, owning and preserving land and of obviously adding infra around that land so it's not just barren land. Um and I wanted to discuss my thoughts whether I'm on the right path, wrong path. Uh you know where the future of buying and owning and even renting real estate is going to go in the next few years. And I want to get someone on who I thought was an expert at this and get their ideas, but I didn't want to get the average real estate person because no offense to your business, but the average real estate person is like, you know, three gold chains, we are gold lovers, you know, long flowing ka and they're always like invest here, you'll make money. I got you on because sure you've been in real estate. You come, you know, you you've been in this ecosystem for a very long time, but also you studied math and philosophy, right? So, and in our conversation offline, you're always you're still very much a forward-looking human, right? You're still thinking about the future. So, and you're not saying it was always like this in the past, therefore it's going to be like this. You have that open-mindedness that this is where it's going to go. So, I got you on because I think uh you understand this better than anybody else. And I have a lot of curious questions. Um and some of them will be smart, that doesn't make sense for them. But feel free to you know cut me off if you feel some questions don't make sense because real estate I don't know much about but I have been buying it for the last couple of years and especially now we've moved to North Bangalore. We're in Hebal now and you know further north a lot of the property has been appreciated like crazy. It makes no sense like I hope you purchased in North Bangalore only. I did and that's a good growing suburb. Yeah. But here's the thing, right? Like um everyone says the stock market will always perform better. But if you look at the property price in North Bangalore versus the stock market, it's no comparison, right? It's just I'm like wait maybe you're not investing in the right places and stuff like that. But you know I am I'm not the right person to give that advice. So I got you on for just to learn more and I want to start

### [4:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=291s) Ajitesh’s Background and Entry into Real Estate

off with the question of your background like why did you even get into real estate? So Warun firstly thank you for having me here and I'm super excited to talk with you and connect uh with your audience and particularly you know talking about real estate and tech right this is the sort of real estate is seen as one of the earliest uh sort of industry and tech is the latest baby it's like the oldest is shaking hands with the youngest right so super excited to talk about real estate and tech but yeah so a little bit about myself I come from a real estate family background so my dad was one of the founder of Ashoko builders one of the oldest developer company hydrobat. So from when I from very young I was exposed to you know our business like just simple things of going to site and probably you know uh like after school my driver used to pick me up and we used to drop off my dad's lunch and go home. So simple things like that I'm exposed to I was exposed to okay what sort of things happen in the room you know meeting rooms site pay and what are different challenges and all of that. So I had that curiosity and during period of time when I was doing my undergrad and all so during summers I used to go to office a little more frequently. So I was exposed to little depth of the business problems right so that's how I started my journey right and uh then after I finishing my undergrad I did an economics with a minor in math and few courses in philosophy which was frankly the most interesting in all these three but yeah after that I came back worked with my dad for 3 years and then we developed creative differences and then I set up ASBL along with my partner Anil in 2017. So but right from the word go uh I was more curious in what sort of you know how can real estate be impacted if we are data first right uh because see real estate again is with you know I've seen my dad and uh spear group also they had best of the best intentions when it come to you know fulfilling their obligations right but most of the times then it you know they could only finish a certain percentage of what their obligations were so that's when I realized that it's not intentions you need int intelligence and for any intelligence what do you need? You need data and for data to consistently collect data on a day in dayout scale you need applications you need tech suits so that as people do transactions on it data gets collected. So that's the sort of approach with which we wanted to look at uh the real estate uh you know our worldview of real estate was. So that's how our journey started and yeah and coming back to you know the way you started the conversation yes this is the only I would say product which cannot be manufactured at least for a good amount of our lifetime and maybe in the next gen 10 generations lifetime if at all human species has 10 generations but yeah so yes land cannot be manufactured and whereas now with AI and probably AI merging with robotics in probably next decade or whatever a lot of the things can be manufactured and they will be abund they'll be abundantly available right so that way real estate is something which cannot be manufactured and I feel a lot of the younger generation understands real estate a lot lesser than what they understand with you know equities or other asset categories right so one of yeah one of my objective is also to you know spread awareness on how to you know how to diagnose real estate it's a very mythical over period of time it's become sort of almost like a myth, right? So people like let's say you ask any uh you know person in probably 25 to 35 or 40 age group how to invest in a stock or a different asset class like that cryptos or something they can give you some sort of logic okay uh this is a logic you can see maybe last year sales profit pie and then this is where you go and get data you seldom have such conversation around real estate like real estate investment typically people do okay my brother invested my cousin invested 10 of us are investing well that really doesn't add to any safety. If the Titanic hits the iceberg, it really doesn't matter if all you have a bunch of relatives going in it. You're not going to get any special uh lifeboat, right? It doesn't happen that way. But uh but fortunately over the last uh 2 3 years a lot of things have happened on the data side of real estate, right? Which general generally people are not very aware of because there's not it's not spoken a lot. Now you can simply go to any RA website. Let's say you're in Bangalore, you can go to you know Bangalore or TI Karnatakar. in. com com and pin code by pin code it has all the data of what's all the supply like by supply I mean okay how many two bedrooms are coming how many threebedrooms and when they will be handed over by which developer is you can build out a pura supply equation okay in this neighborhood this is amount of housing supply which is coming with so and so builder then you can categorize them in fact you can just take a download and dump it in any of your generative uh AIS and they can summarize it for you so just by this sheer thing you can see that the you can simply understand the supply and your investment can happen in line with the supply right so it's tools like this which people are not aware of hence real estate is becoming more and more of an enigma and you see a lot of younger age group moving to other asset classes

### [10:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=608s) Buying vs. Renting Real Estate

interesting I want to touch upon that question of you know buyers rent right because I think two years 3 years we had all the financial influencers come out and say buying is useless renting is the most important thing because you can just if you have extra money put it in put that money in the stock market and it'll grow faster and of course you're living in a rented house and you can always be kicked out and whatnot and examples were given of billionaires and this and that of course who's for whom the rules are totally different so do you have a thesis on buying versus renting so one this has to be uh you know explained in a various like multi-layered stuff right so first and foremost you look at all the big billionaires of the world in fact Bill Gates is one of the biggest uh land not he's the biggest land owner of America right Jeff Bezos I think is the biggest single land holding if it's one chunk he's the owner of that in somewhere in Texas so a lot of people are putting their money in real estate but again as you said the rules are different for billionaires and for different sections of people right so in the buy versus rent it's very simple so in your 20s right and you see a lot of content also that and a lot of news articles also which say jenzes are not buying homes well frankly genzies cannot buy homes can't afford it. Right? So when in your 20s, it can be Gen Z's, millennials or maybe boomers or any person in their 20s, you can't afford real estate versus investing in like equities or something where you can enter with low cost, low entry cost like 10,000 rupees you have, you can simply open a demat account and go start participating in that. In real estate at least in let's say the top seven or eight cities of the country, which is where majority of the real estate play happens, right? Almost 75 to 80% of real estate market happens in the 7 to 8 cities only. Right? So there you need anywhere around 15 to 20 lakhs of money as a 20 lakhs assume 20 lakhs 20 lakh rupees you need as a barrier to entry down payment and then you need to be making a how you know a sort of a salary of anywhere around a minimum of 12 lakhs to 12 lakhs start right so this is a entry cost to enter into real estate now naturally when you are in your 20s then it's very simple you have to rent for two reasons one in your 20s your job is also more mobile, right? You after the college, it's not like the first job you got and you're going to settle there and probably, you know, do that for the next 30 years. You're figuring out you're figuring out. So, you're more mobile. So, there's no point of buying a house when you're more mobile. But as you come to 30s, right, PE and as family life starts, in fact, I would say the real threat to real estate or buying houses has got nothing to do with age and which generation you belong to. It's the family life. Let's say the family structure change. If people are not marrying, then I think the fundamentally buying patterns will change. But so as long as there's that social sociological change is not happening right so it's fine. So as you're in your 30s, what happens? You're married and then you're planning for your first child. At this time, you want more stability, right? So real estate even offers that sort of stability value, right? Which is typically not talked about in most of these uh you know uh most of these conversations because how do you even attribute a value to it? Like for me stability might be x rupees for you 3x rupees. But one thing we can assume is once people start marrying and once people marry and they plan for kids that's when the demand for space of your own goes up. So I would say and in fact even patterns also of buying patterns if you see pan India most people are buying their first home in their early to mid30s and then going on for upgrade in their uh 40 to I would say 45ish. So two houses is what the pattern is more mainly looking like for I would say the top uh one and a half percentile of the economy. In fact most people who are buying organized real estate are the two percentile of the economy. In that section people are no longer buying one house per lifetime. It's currently moved to two. So when you buy your first house it is wiser to buy something smaller something you can afford something you can pay off the loans off because you anyway think that most people will the data says that most people upgrade 10 20 years later anyway. Yes. Yeah. See again uh one simple fact what I would always tell customers is if whatever your loan amount is it shouldn't be more than 30 to one/ird of your earnings monthly earnings. So that's the extent to which you can go and buy house. If let's say you are somebody making a lot more money then naturally you can play in accordance with that. So 1/3 to 40% maximum of your uh whatever monthly earnings should go to your EMI. You know I find that I find that maybe because I'm an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur all my life. I find that thought very scary that you're giving away onethird of your earnings to this and then you're taking a 20 30 year EMI because question especially with AI coming. I don't even know if I'm going to have a job in like 10 years. I'm not just talking about me. I'm talking about everybody 20 30 years how are people going to pay off their EMIs? So I just feel like with all that instability and uncertainty how you betting it 20 years right? So even if you look at statistics most of the people take 20 year home loans. Why? Because your month-on-month EMI is lower. Let's say you take like a 7-year home loan, but you look at the average time which people are taking to pay off these home loans, it's 7 years. So though people are taking 20-year home loans, what the time they're taking to pay it off is 7 years. So they're taking 20 years more for security and your monthly outflow is less, right? Let's say you take a 7-year home loan, your monthly outflow is going to what go 3x, right? In proportion to that, of course, you'll be paying less interest, but your EMI is going to be much higher. So that's one thing. And second thing is like just like any other asset home also appreciates. Now when we talk about home appreciation generally people say okay the best years are currently probably you look from post pandemic we've been doing exceptionally well where things are appreciating somewhere around 10%. At least most of the micro markets in all major cities. But let me

### [15:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=954s) Understanding Real Estate Investment Math

tell a little ma very less understood math around home investing right how people can make 18 to 20% kagger right if the home appreciates at a 6 and a half to 6. 7%. So I'll explain it in detail because uh you know I you know this is something which is not very well understood right let's say you bought a home at 100 rupees right most of the homes you pay 15% down payment uh that is 15 rupees and rest 85 rupees you take a bank loan so mind you when you're buying a Honda construction property the bank loan will not be given to in its entirety to the developer right that 85 rupees is spread let's say you're buying right at the beginning right and which is what I would uh recommend That's my recommendation for people who want to make money by investing like flipping and making money right. So you buy upon when the work starts and then once the project reach sand let's assume that's a 4 year cycle. So 15 rupees you need to do a down payment and 85 rupees the bank will be paying on your behalf to the developer over the rest four years. So let's assume for a easy calculation divided by four every year probably the bank is paying 20 20%. Right? based on the construction. Now for that you borrowed money currently at 8 and a half%. Right? Let's say the property has appreciated at 6. 7%. 6 and that I'm taking for you know uh 6 and 12% is the inflation in the country. So let's say in real terms the appreciation is zero right in notional terms right you're simply running at the pace of inflation which is 6 and a half%. Right? Now 6 12% compounded for 4 years you're going to land at 1. 3 that is your 100 rupee becomes 130 rupees. Now on that day you're selling off your property right now when you sell off your property that day let's debit the liabilities first and foremost you borrowed 85 rupees from the bank you need to pay that. So 13 say you remove 85 you're landing at what? 45 for these four years depending on the amount of money which is dispersed from the bank only to that component which might be 15 20 30% yearon year for that you're paying the EMI right you're paying the interest sorry not the EMI the interest that again approximately summitates to another 15 rupees so from 45 you remove that 15 you're left with 30 you invested with 15 so that's doubling your money in 4 years so that is 19. 1% kagger so very seldom people don't see real estate in this format. I mean it's not been told that's why they don't they're not generally aware of this. Now of course everything can't be so rosy. What are some of the risks in this? So is if the developer is probably you know uh not finishing on time instead of four years it's gone for 6 years then you're in big soup. Now the question is where can you pull out data which can point which can give you a reasonable understanding that okay this is going to developer performance. Developer performance right? Where do you get this data? Simple. You go to a developers website. uh there all developers have past projects look at the past projects and look at the current project let's say past the developer has built I don't know maybe standalone buildings and now he's talking about a 30 floor building so your risk quotient should go up because the knowhow will not be there right let's say somebody has built commercial buildings and now suddenly residential risk quotient go up somebody has built like 30 floor building this is like a 40 floor okay not there's only 5 10% variance right and next you figure in the supply equation from the rera website so this way you can make this entire thing more quantitative and whereby you can minimize the risk or you can have a much better forecast. So this you know these are some ways how people can make money and probably in our older generation right people have invested in lands and which I feel that day and age is over for at least most part of south and west India where land they're not investing in land anymore uh more yeah investing in land contri see I'll tell you what happens with land investments let's say you invested in a land empty baron land it will cost you nothing probably the valuation of that is more to the tune of what is the agricultural yield which is going to come a certain multiple above that let's say I'm a farmer I'm on a 1 acre piece of land I might be earning like couple of lakhs a year and if the land doesn't have a good road nothing then maybe you have come to uh buy that land okay I'm going to make two lakhs if I have to sell it to you maybe I'll factor in next five years probably value like earnings and then discount it and earn it maybe I'll sell it to you for five lakhs then the road comes right naturally the usage goes up because the road comes the density also more and more people are commuting to that area right so more will be the demand more people commuting to the area okay somebody will want to put a petrol bank because more vehicles are going now petrol bank then somebody will put just beside it some store like that the density goes up as density goes up value goes up so in pre-industrialized uh I would say states right naturally this road has not yet come so there you go buy land and wait for 20 years you'll most likely have a 100x return which was what 100x over 20 years so 10 times in 10x sorry 10 times in 10 years is 24% kagger so yeah I would say 100x in 20 years is like 24% kagger straight pre-industrial area you're talking about yeah probably some parts of north of India south may I think most parts of south are well industrialized so that road walla story is done because the road is done the factory is done the shops are done that 100x stories are not there south and parts of But if you look one generation behind probably to our parents' generation, every household, most of the households have the story where they invested right when our fathers started working, they just bought a piece of land and then by the time now they're retiring that's a major part of their wealth portfolio. Many households have the stories right where they got that crazy return. I think for our generation that is done in the south maybe if people are still want to hunt there will be those sort of opportunities available in the north areas which are less industrialized. So that's the way you can, you know, make money by investing in land as well. Okay. Let's say what if we get to the

### [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=1315s) Investment Strategy in an Automated World

point where everything is totally automated. Now we're doing like future I had this question a lot. Yeah. Right. What if everything is totally automated like robots are driving cars. We will buy a house. Yeah. Like the question is if you knew that in 10 years actually first let's talk about the decisions you take today if you knew everything was getting on. Let's say in 10 years there's a hypothetical scenario where 90% of jobs are automated. I'm very sure 100% of jobs will not be automated. they'll still there'll always be some big section of jobs and people believe this is not no way this is going to happen over whatever but actually it's already like that like some 80% of India lives on less than 7,000 rupees a month this is like 2016 I think Marial had written this less than 7,500 rupees a month they live in like some 70 80% of India lives on that number right at least now though it's a billion people 65 60 65 70% yeah 70 75 the like a billion people in India their Average household incomes are around 70 to 80,000 rupees which is essentially perm. Yeah. Peranom which is a lot of people watching this that's shocking right because they're like how can how am I going to live on 6,000 rupees a month but that's most of India that's you are actually the exception if you find that shocking. Mhm. But the truth is it can happen to anybody. Mhm. you also. Your cushy job that you're doing today you could go back and have to live on 6 7,000 rupees a month. Mhm. Now let's take the unfortunate scenario because I'm I always like thinking pessimistic first. Then I will always come to the optimistic because look there's always an optimistic path but it's best to cover your basis right do the stuff that yeah get the basics in order get the basic get survival in order let's say you had a job now and you think there's 5 years 10 years to go before you know real automation kicks in and takes some of it away what are the investment decisions you'd make now with regards to real estate would you buy land because I read online that if you want to feed a family of four and you need to farm uh you need about an acre, right? And that that covers an entire vegetarian diet. It won't cover a non-vegetarian diet because you need to then rear animals. And for those that think this is crazy listening to all this, I mean, just go down Bangalore down the street, there'll be a poultry farm. Yes. Right. It's it's a common thing. It's just invisible to us. So, we act like it it's a this is not going to happen. But what would what are the decisions you'd make today? See, if if that's a world where, you know, if all jobs are most likely going to end, then yeah, I'll probably make sure I own a land and, you know, be able to provide the basic food, basic means of life. What about an apartment? Buy an apartment again. See, definitely. Yeah, I I'll do that also, right? Because more than having a land, an apartment will give me a little more better comfort. So at least I don't have to worry like today apartments relatively in such a world right uh if I don't have a job I still need shelter see the basics of life right roti makan kapa what they say even why are we telling we want to buy a land so we can have some shelter and plow some food so that we can feed ourselves and then so these three will be fundamental essentials right so yeah be of course if I have less money I'll buy a land if I have more money then I'll buy an apartment even more money a bunk or things like that. Yeah, land is the cheapest. Uh it depends on context, right? Let's say in city naturally land is way more expensive. So give me the math. Let's say Bangalore. Do you have a rough idea of the prices? No, I can. So

### [25:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=1518s) Costs and Realities of Urban vs. Rural Land

let's say if I wanted to buy one acre of land, right? Like we said 1 acre you need for about family of four, right? Seeds and all we'll be able to figure out. How much does one acre of land in? say in this area right this Hebal and this area I presume it costs somewhere around 12 to 15 cr an acre so 12 crores an acre here and this is farmland urban land you can consume because ideally if you're buying this land I mean farming is never going to yield you anything but yeah a land in why wouldn't it yield you anything see you simply take you bought a piece of land and you did some farming on it let's say you put patty you can put two times a year and each patty crop per acre gives you around 60,000 rupees right into two one lakh 20,000 is your revenue and may remove at least 50% cost which may be water seeds and all of this 50% is your margin 60,000 per year is what you'll make let's say you move to cash crops something more like avocados and things like this I don't know if they can be grown in the soil year but if you move to such things then it goes up to two three I think the highest being around 3 four lakhs that's the maximum yield you're going to get uh from agriculture perka so same land I go and probably put a I don't know a mall or a kirana store or a high-res apartment its yield goes up today. The reason it's 12 crores here is because I can as a builder maybe I can come and build like 50 or 60 homes on top of that. That's the reason it has that value. Okay. So now tell me if we were to build if you were to buy purchase land somewhere far away like what's the cheapest I could get land in Bangalore an acre outside outskirts let's say. Huh? I think around 25 to 30 lakhs somewhere if you're traveling uh you know let's think a 50 km radius right I think 50 km radius you should get around 10 to 20 lakhs range I think you should be getting so about 20 lakhs for an acre and I'm good to go yeah and what about but and you can potentially have that 20 lakhs farmland there but still have a building here and then take care of both yeah in fact a lot of people are doing that especially uh you know you're living in your cities for your you know your week weekday life I would say so one BHK in a city or a 2 small two BHK two to three because you'll have kids right uh so for their schools your weekday office malls and all weekends people are migrating out and I see a reversal of trend for people who have crossed 50 what they are doing is weekends weekdays they are staying in those areas weekends they're coming to the city to meet their friends and all so I see that change after 50 before 50 your weekday life is in the city for those of them who can offer they are having like a farm sort of life uh you know like an hour drive away that's sort of a trend which picked up a lot these days and if you go even further it should further come down right until of course if there's another urban center another what is the cheapest land you can find between Bangalore and Hyderabad 1 acre uh I think yeah maybe you should some uh south of I think the border of AP and somewhere there you should be getting around maybe five lakhs I don't 5 to 10 lakhs I don't think you'll get anything less than at least if you're let's say the main highway is there right highway say you're traveling into internally let's say uh half an hour then you'll get that five lakh car range on highway I think nothing less than 25 or 50 lakhs very interesting this is very interesting and

### [28:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=1709s) Predicting Land Prices with Urban Economics

there's actually a science also it's called urban spatial economics which uses integration of geography economics to predict land prices again it's fairly complicated I mean in the past but now with more and more tools one of the best tool being Google maps API, right? You can simply search how many restaurants are there in this location. So what imagine like this now like a restaurant, an ATM, a you can just put a screenshot of that Google maps into GPT and be like and put five different screens. Yeah. You can do that. Yeah. And you're looking for rate of growth. You're looking for change between last year and this year how the Yeah. So you can just do that like Hebal is really grown. Yes. And even for the next five years, it's probably going to be one of the hottest place in Bangalore. In fact, last year Hebal has done what four and a half million square feet of leasing, commercial leasing. So to put in perspective, uh most of these IT tech companies for every 100 square ft² they have one employee on the upper side average at 760 70 but common area 100 ft one employee. So million square ft 10,000 employees. So four 4 and a half million 45,000 jobs are going to come in this neighborhood and we've only created 300. So you've contributed to that. So 45,000 and you can think average salary one lakh. Of course there'll be people less and people way more. So one lakh then you can see a host of pura how the area is going to evolve out. So you think heal will become the next is a good place compared to and what about yelanka? Yelanka I'm not much aware of because I'm I don't predominantly operate out of Bangalore but this area I know because I've been coming here frequently that's how I know relative to other places but again Sjapur and all of them they're more established neighborhoods but I think the I would say per capita roads if you like per square kilometer the amount of roads you have I think this area is better so definitely it will do better but again now I think with the metro works going on and all more and more people will move this way and I feel for everything else there'll be a world of abundance the only thing that AI cannot produce and that's why I wanted to bring you on the podcast is real estate only once you have some space that you can live in yeah see essentially if it's 1 acre is what's required for a uh family then at least like a country like India we are at land shortage really yeah see 1 acre 250 acres make a square kilometer and India has 33 lakh square kilmters so that means 82 cr people you can fit in you have 140 but again this a family of four right so yeah roundabout we'll be there but maybe something like Australia has a lot of land so maybe we can can't no none of us can afford land in

### [31:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=1867s) Growth Potential of North Bangalore

Australia I have a question for you right you said that investing in north Bangalore is a good decision and I just invested in north Bangalore why do you feel so like what are the signals that you're looking see very simple right so north Bangalore may your Bangalore as a city is leasing close to 16 to 18 million square ft 4 and a. 5 million is concentrated in north Bangalore Right? So you're going to bare minimum make 45,000 IT jobs in this uh neighborhood. Next, any city, if you look historically across the world, a city always grows in the direction of faster transportation uh center. The fastest transportation center is an airport. So the airport is closest to North Bangalore, right? It's in that direction. So all cities always migrate in that direction. And your average infrastructure in this area compared to other parts of Bangalore is much better. You have bigger roads, wider roads and metro connectivity is better. The social infra is sort of has to get better compared to probably the central business areas, right? Which is what will follow because the social infra if you actually look at it, people working in the knowledge sector economy end up earning the most. They're top of the chain, right? And actually people who uh earn more consume more. So they tend to migrate to areas where they can consume other where they need more recreational spaces like um entertainment places, malls, schools, all of these sort of infrastructure. This infrastructure is relatively low in this area compared to other areas. That's why it's cheaper. Now with 45,000 jobs coming in now some entrepreneur will realize oh let me go put a restaurant let me go run a school you know some demand we all yeah so once all that infrastructure comes then what happens more and more people are you know the demand for space goes up then prices will shoot up much better so think about this wherever the rate of change of recreational what we call third space in realistically we define spaces into three spaces first is the space where you live that is your house second is where you work which is your office third is your recreational Anything like you know your uh park, entertainment places, temples, all of that are third spaces. Wherever the rate of change of third space is higher, those spaces the property price moves a lot more which is again interdependent on this but that's a good factor to look at rate of change of third space number of simply in terms of quantity. See basically this is probably this the best place to be in the world at this point of time. one uh you know the Indian economy is opening up where we're growing at 7 7%. Right? And then there is a demographic advantage versus Europe where the population is actually decreasing at a big time and most of most people are older and uh you know from that line we are at the best place right place at the right time. So I hope we make the maximum out of it. We leave aside the what's in it for other swallow mindset which I presume big time with the leftist mindset. It doesn't matter what's in it for others. It's important what's in it for us and you know we take choices in that direction. Like you know I don't think after AI anyone's going to be poor in 10 years. I also side with that. Yeah. So of course I don't know how jobs are going to change. See poor doesn't mean the amount of wealth amount of cash you have. I think that's the mistake people make. They always look at oh if you're making this much money you're poor or this even the stat we spoke about right 7,500 whatever. Correct. I like to look at it in terms of quality of life. Do you have roti cup like think of the basics correct? Has this technology given you roti kapra makan internet sadaki and all and has it made your quality of life better? India is now electrified. Okay. You go 200 years in the past, the best kings didn't have electricity. They didn't have a TV. No matter how much wealth they had compared to everybody else, how much actual cash else or whatever that quality of life was lower. Yeah. Quality of was lower. I think the poorest person today who's not hungry like I think yes malnourishment. Yes. A hunger problem at a population. I think once Roti Kapraan is done, I think the average person has a much better quality of life. True. Even your Zeppto driver, you look at a Zeppto driver, I think, no offense, but I think that the average Zeppto driver or the average Uber driver, whatever, still has a much higher quality of life than even the best kings back then. Yes. Right. They have electricity. They have entertainment on command with their phones. They have these cars, which sure might not be a Ferrari, but it's still something that's take them from point A to point far more quicker, right, than correct. And kings did travel back in the day, right? Like there was a lot of wars, this that there was so much horse riding like it's Sure, you can always look at it relative to others and say the software engineer still has a better life or the software engineer can look at the entrepreneur and but there's always see society people have varied skills and at different points of time different skills get valued differently by the markets. So whoever probably has those skills or goes and acquires those skills there will be that thing but yeah I think the average quality of life should be seen. Yeah, has gone up and in 10 20 years the average quality of life is going to go even better with AI. You're going to have a robot at home. You're old, you're sick, the robot can take care of you, right? Uh you're you're having medical issue. You can't afford surgery. The robot can do surgery on you, right? It is absolutely possible that it'll be able to do this. Okay. Like what you mean? Remote surgery or just a robot? It's a real robot, so can Yeah, it can perform surgery. like in 10 years it's going to be smart enough to be like it'll have not just a manual dexterity but know exactly what to do in case you have a problem diagnostics will still be expensive right because you still need to go to a hospital for a expensive M you think some sort of I don't know these days those patches are coming right they can start monitoring a lot of things in yeah but you know if you have cancer you still need to do a PET scan like diagnostics will still be expensive but in India it's so much cheaper than the US like I feel like if you if you're having a medical issue India is the best place to be Yeah, US for some reason I mean I I mean it cost me like crazy amount of bread for a lot of things US I think the quality of life has decreased and one big attribute at least from a livability standpoint they don't build anything they barely build anything new right if you're not building anything like for example you take a look at Dubai right Dubai is building world-class infrastructure because it's modern it's today US add that in the 1960s '7s 80s and then for some reason they became I don't want to build anything like I don't want I don't know anything they become overly regulated and they don't build anything and that's why the quality of life comes down like in US I let me share a small story right I stayed with my cousin in SFO uh and then for like a one week I didn't see any neighbors I like do nobody live in this neighborhood are people dead or what's happening why don't I see anybody but you see the design then I came out I just walked around the design of the plan was in such a way that your interaction with your neighbor is zero now and whereas US is now struggling with loneliness and isolation. If you somewhere in SF got shot, the homeless people are all over the streets like you know all of this is happening and in so many things I don't think they I think that the crown is over but I'm very thankful for social media because without social media like 20 years ago it was always like us is perfect there's nothing wrong with it. It's like everything's amazing and friends the you only saw TV showact on the produced version of is only on the TV. No, I think I think still in like cutting edge technology they have the edge over the world but in a lot of other aspects I think they've lost it. I mean there's somebody or the other country which is doing better. Yeah. I think India's India is a great place to be. India is just not pretty yet. Like when you walk down a street in most places it still feels over period of time. Yeah. Which is why you know I think real estate is so important. We always look down upon real estate by the way. Exactly. I keep saying in America bankers at one point of time now maybe it might change. In America, bankers and India builders are not respected. Yeah. Right. We are always the, you know, at least in your movies, we and politicians are always the gundas. But but that's why I said the 10 chains and I'm talking about the 10 chains based on some move in every movie you were represented like that, right? Exactly. Right. But here's the thing, the on the real estate side, I think

### [38:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=2337s) Importance of Real Estate Aesthetics

the minute you start making pretty things like we learned this with videos, right? We used to do I I've done videos for 9 years. Mhm. The minute we started making pretty videos, we started making these really pretty videos on this channel called AV. And then even on my channel, we really started upgrading the type of videos we made. It changed how people thought about us, design and aesthetics are really how you build like something worth for other people to look at and be like that's nice. Yeah. Aesthetics actually have that. Yeah. So I think you have this great opportunity to make everything from the hospital to the residence resial to the park. That's getting better, right? the villas villa places there. Actually also one more thing see what happens is real estate is a high capex industry now so India may real estate has been heavily just because the market structure was hyper local then naturally the service of that demand is the builders right also had to be hyper local in hyper local what happens I understand the norms of let's say this hebal area I understand the local politicians local see again politicians I'm not saying in a bad context they are important stakeholders because the land laws are governed by them they frame the laws Yeah, the bureaucracy, the politicians, they're all like required stakeholders. So what happened? I can only because I know the laws here, I know I have the relations. I could only serve to people in Hebal area. Now how am I going to get economies of scale if I don't get see whatever research I do if all I can do is serve maybe 100,000 people living in Hebal? Why would I even do it in the first place? You need scale, right? I make I do one research, one invention and I can scale it for a million or 100 million people. Correct? So that has never happened in real estate because of which your company you had many small company let me share one interesting statistic in China now they make close to 1 cr homes a year right and majority of the demand is served by 15 to 20 developers right hence you see the beautifification of China which is happening especially on social media you see some of the places in Shanghai and Shenzhen and these cities they're like even like west is also left behind that's how you see them right in India you have like five lakh homes a year being built and four to five lakhs approximately and that is served by almost 10,000 companies. M so you have hundreds of mino companies right let's say now if I'm a if my balance sheet is small I can go and develop a neighborhood okay develop a good park good-looking buildings also cost more right so now what's happening is because of rera like you know reg more regulation coming in better practices coming in now the industry is consolidating now as a developer if I invest in some idea and make some invention or make whatever make my supply chain better reduce my cost then I can serve instead of one lakh people I can serve a million people. So as that economies of scale come comes in then our R& D budgets also go up and then yeah not only R& D even spending more on that particular you know aesthetics is costs a lot in real estate because it's a physical product so all of that is going to happen and it'll only work the aesthetics will only work when there's demand for aesthetics. Exactly. But I think now the demand as India has more disposable income as the rich get richer they want more pretty things and I do firmly believe and it also takes time. Yeah, it takes time. It takes five years, six years to build something. So I'm very bullish that India will also look pretty. Right. We have the in my opinion we have one of the best healthcare in the world. Yes. Right. And I've been I've actually tried healthare from different nations. Right. And India has the best healthcare in the world. Trust me on this. Um India has probably I mean education system was the worst but I think with AI education system exactly has changed has overhauled so it doesn't m everyone has the same education system now we all have YouTube now entertainment though is on par with the rest of the world right if you look at videos and I was speaking to somebody from walks the other day right like which used to produce one of the best videos in the US they're like the stuff you do with AV now is like kind of on par competing with them So it's it's on par with the best in the world. So and you can take every segment like Nikl Kat for example, right? He's a he's interviewing the guy from the prime minister of New Zealand, right? Or something like that. Yeah. Recently um I mean I don't know if there are any other billionaires in any other countries who are who are actively creating that content that sort of content. So it's just it's become a very vibrant. It's it's on paribrant. it's on par, right? And now India is going to do AAA games. So, so I think there's just so many things that um that India is now getting on par with real estate the aesthetics it's still so far behind and I just wish you know there's some way to to change that and it's just amazing but I think it's something which is going for example look at so like South Bombay you're seeing some of the you know skyscrapers coming up there are world class like the tall slender looking glass buildings with good-looking crowns and all that's bigger happening because naturally the market has reached there and developers are also and also information like you can now travel to the US see the best building and study it and be like I want to make this and you have by the way I also underestimated how much money like the top people have in India like I always thought see that's the problem right when you have a certain circle and you see like videos saying someone making 20 lakhs 30 lakhs you think okay that's the richest person will have maybe 10x that correct but in reality the richest the rich people the rich builders who can actually afford to build a building like that who can go to the US look at it and be like we should build this have thousands of crores right liquid and I didn't know this and I just didn't know how much wealth they were sitting on but they were just afraid see one thing with India is a policy regulation right uh you have policies changing frequently because real estate is very interlin with government whenever there's a change in government then direction right change in the way land gets used change in certain policies right so that is a real big problem. Imagine like see let's say in all other areas you're making a product and the consumer is buying and the entire life cycle is maybe 1 month, two month, three month. In real estate we need to invest a lot of money before something happens. That's why you don't have neighborhood scale developments. By neighborhood scale like you let's take a look uh in Dubai right most of your uh you know subscribers would be privy to BH Khalifa right? One of the tallest uh I think the tallest building in the world. That entire area is around four, five or maybe thousand acres developed only by ear right that is the reason they were able to develop a good-looking mall a good-looking in fact the building came in the end the BJ Khalifa didn't come first it was a Dubai mall and you see that entire creek is very well done so India may that scale first that scale developers are not there because we don't have the balance sheets we were never allowed to grow to that extent because of policy what did they cut because of the policy suddenly some let's say now I went and acquired 400 acres of land one place and some policy changed. It has happened several times in the past but policy changed m let's say suddenly maybe I could build 30 floors and now it's cut down to 10 floors. What happens to the value of my land right? It was residential zone suddenly they made it into some industrial zone. What happens then? There was a road going this way but now the road has changed. What happens then? So because of which buying land big land parcels developers are now moving away. In fact all the developers take a look at 20078 pay the developers who were number one number two in the country like the top breed a lot of them are bankrupt today because the governments changed then the next set of government came up with different rules I'm not telling this government is bad or that government is bad but what I'm saying is if you need better quality of life you need consistent policy and always again I'm not saying all builders are good builders also have their fair share of mistakes in this but the builder always gets blamed not the

### [46:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=2804s) Contrarian Insight: "Don't Buy Land"

I have one last question and this question is around ASBL right like I know you guys are Hyderabad based give me some highlights of how ASBL has been sort of growing over the last few years and then also tell me and this question I ask everybody right give me one insight you have that nobody in real estate believes you on okay like something that you're completely taking the opposite chance to your industry okay I'll answer that up front don't buy land okay for a developer it's ultra waste don't buy for a developer for a I'm telling purely from a developer let me digress that a little bit so uh essentially what we have realized is whenever we buy land either we fund it with equity or debt right most of the debt to buy land is comes at 18% cost equity is a little more costier let's assume 24 but you know 18 to 24 is your cost what we have seen is no land appreciates for 18% on a 10ear scale It's very impossible to hit those lands. So that's one key USB of ASBL is we are purely a customized manufacturing company. Why I say customized is depending on the micro market we're building the product changes. We are not a mass manufacturing company. Mass manufacturing company you got one product and you're building it everywhere. So we are custom manufacturing company. So taking the micro market the customer is going to stay. We change the product category, design, build, all designs we do. So design, build and dispatch. So for us, land is like a raw material like just like steel and cement. Nobody have you seen anybody holding cement. Nobody does. Forest land is same. And if you actually plot data together and see right in fact all the developers who have sort of built land banks on a 10 to 20 year scale really struggled all developers struggled people for some reason. I also don't know why. uh there's if you are a developer there's an intrinsic fetish towards land I see that in my dad also in fact the only place where we bought some land for future that was because of his push I keep telling him that I'm going to extract some tax from him uh but yeah so that's that is one big insight what we gained over my 10 years of practice so

### [48:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=2938s) ASBL’s Operations and Expansion Goals

how much does ASPL actually manage right now mhm see uh from a uh operations perspective we are building we are operating around 8 and a half million square f feet. So that's put around 4,000 homes, right? Uh around 30% of it is delivered and we're doing managing the facilities. 70% of it I would say 60% of it is under construction. 10% is just breaking ground in the next couple of years. Another 5 to 7 million square ft² is what we are adding. So if you put in like every year now we are sort of adding around 2,00 to 2,500 homes you know uh to our portfolio. And uh do you have plans to come to Bangalore? Absolutely. Uh we are very hungry to be in all the major cities particularly Bangalore being the first because it's very the sort of your TG is similar to Hydrobat like a lot of tech professionals are our customers and Bangalore is the hub for tech professionals right slightly ahead of hydroad. So yes uh but we are like that's the reason we have closely studied this area the SAL and North Bangalore area that's if you're doing something here we should like I told you we should do something offline we would love to take a couple of acres and figure out how we can do absolutely so yeah I mean but yeah I think we want to list our company go IPO maybe two three years post that we'll have sufficient capital to come to other cities how much you plan to raise we don't know probably around 1,000 cr we do like last year we did around 1,000 CR worth of net sales this year we should probably on trajectory to double it. So yeah given that I think depending on the markets so this year about 2,000 crores in sales. Yes. This year net sales that's what we're looking at because we've already done close to so we've got a good launch so far. I mean the in what

### [50:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-xiIRz2Fo&t=3040s) Hyderabad vs. Bangalore Real Estate Comparison

way is Hyderabad different from Bangalore in real estate. See affordability man like Hydrabad is way way more affordable than Bangalore. I'll give you some statistics right. Uh so from a lifestyle perspective let's diagnose how much does it cost to go out like when you go out what you typically entertainment or eating right so for a family for a pe for two people eating out in Bangalore is around 1,800 to 2,000 in Idabad it's 1200 of course that's a small thing let's put that aside what does it cost to get your kid a good education let's assume an IB school right in Bangalore it's IDBAD it's around what two around two lakh rupees is what it costs Bangalore it's around three and a half lakhs so that way again it's higher Let's say you are renting a an apartment in probably the uh closer to city center in for a three-bedroom Hyderabad it cost you 50,000 Bangalore it's around 65 70,000 uh let's take uh for example yeah to buy right if you're buying in like again closer to city center hydrobad is 10k Bangalore is 18k 18 to 20k so affordability is where hydrobad is way way better and even urban mobility the amount of time you can cover amount of distance you can cover uh in an hour and Bangalore is one of the everybody knows Bangalore traffic it's one of it's actually after Kolkata I think it's one of the it's the worst in the country IDA is the best in the metro only Delhi has gotten better before even IDA was better than Delhi also but now Delhi has gotten slightly better so urban mobility and biggest thing water infrastructure so what many people don't realize is that uh a big part of city urban life is piped water that is not drilling bwells but piped water. Bangalore Kapura whatever the metro water board supplies 1400 million L per day hydroat is 2600 population same 13 million year 13 million years so you just see I get to have double more water than what people in Bangalore have and even coverage wise the they have water pipeline which covers for 575 square kilm I about 1 1400 square km so and yeah another I think the last one is pretty much the same from uh safety and security especially safety to women. I think pretty much we both cities are roughly the same. Why I think that's important because when you when there's particular safety emphasis on women then women participation in labor workforce is high. Correct? Then the household becomes a double income household. Double income household you're naturally your wealth goes up much faster. Most likely you'll be in the top 5 percentile of the society. I mean frankly to be one of the tidbit to be in the top 5 percentile of the society 5 to 7% of the society is having a double- inome household. So when a city provides better infrastructure, better safety protocols for women, the women participation in labor workforce goes up. So these are all the things where hydrobad is better. But of course there are certain aspects where Bangalore is still ahead like the quality of tech talent especially senior level tech talent. Bangalore is way ahead. Bangalore has much bigger and established startups compared to Hyderabad. Hydrobad has very good infrastructure like T-UB for that. But still I think the startups have yet to we need to get those big bang hits so that the ecosystem builds out but yeah each city has their own advantages but yeah you can even look at hydroat I can get you the three acres no I'm a Bangalore boy and uh my entire team is here so the entire 3 acres for us is to move our like teams put it together uh we have 25,000 foot here right now in this office but we need three acres of the rate we're growing so okay that's nice it's good to hear that. Yeah. So, so this was a very cool conversation. I had a lot of fun. I didn't feel like two hours passed or 1 hour passed. I have no idea how much time has passed. Um, I'm definitely going to get you on again a few years later to talk about how the last 3 years, four years have been. But thank you so much for doing this. And for those of you that uh want to check it out, go check out ASPL. I'll link uh in the comments just to make your life easier. Uh, but this has been awesome. Thank you so much.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/11977*