Brick By Brick

The real estate market is depressed, but Oberoi Realty has bucked the trend because of its financial discipline and its adoption of best practices.

- Aveek Datta

THE GLITZY OBEROI Mall in Mumbai’s suburb of Goregaon is pretty much the only shopping mall worth its real estate on the road stretching from Bandra in the south to Dahisar in the north. The 500,000 sq. ft. retail destination, built by Oberoi Realty in 2008, isn’t the largest in Mumbai, but has enjoyed a near monopoly in the area since it opened.

Despite steady footfall, Oberoi Realty isn’t afraid to toss things up once in a while. Coffee shop Starbucks, which was near the entrance, was shifted to the first floor and its earlier premises given to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger; multi-brand apparel retailer Central, one of the anchor tenants on the ground floor, made way for Zara; Forever 21 exited the building in favour of Marks & Spencer; and toy store Hamleys replaced Home Centre, a furniture and home décor retailer.

“Churn is important. Customers want churn. We want the mall to be the centre of attraction and not any individual store,” says Vikas Oberoi, chairman and managing director of Oberoi Realty. “I am very clear on one thing: The customer is my master. I only serve my customer and everything revolves around him.”

This is the business ethos with which Oberoi, 49, has built on the foundation laid down by his father Ranvir Oberoi, who founded the company in 1980. In doing so, he has built India’s second most valued realty firm with a market value of more than Rs 17,000 crore. Oberoi Realty, which posted revenues of Rs 1,160.92 crore in FY17, was ranked 218 on the Fortune India Next 500 for 2018. It earned a total operating revenue of Rs 1,215 crore in 2017-18.