CREDAI should eye promoting at least 100 first generation female real estate developers: Smriti Irani

CREDAI should strive to promote first generation female real estate developers: Smriti Irani.

Minister for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs, Smriti Irani, on May 15 said that the builders’ body Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI) should strive to promote first-generation female real estate developers.

“How many female developers do you know of at CREDAI or non-CREDAI? What are you doing at CREDAI to get more and more women developers into the business who are first-generation business leaders? If you can, in your tenure, give to the nation 100 new female developers, ….then you have a successful tenure,” she asked Boman Irani, President of CREDAI, while speaking at the CREDAI Women and Youth Leadership Summit.

Irani also told builders to focus on the affordability of real estate projects without compromising on the quality of construction.

CREDAI announced new teams for its youth wing and women’s wing at the event. The new team for CREDAI Women’s Wing for 2023-25 has Rupa Shah as Convenor, Sarah Jacob as Secretary, and Sapna Rathi as Joint Secretary. Nithish Reddy will be the convenor for CREDAI Youth Wing, while Binitha Dalal has been appointed the Co-convenor and Nilesh Vora, the Secretary. Gaurav Thakkar from Nashik has been designated Chairman for both the youth and the women’s wings of CREDAI.

Irani said that the developers’ body is partnering on a Rs 900-crore proptech fund to incubate and invest in about 100 start-ups related to the real estate sector. This initiative is in partnership with Venture Catalysts, India’s Number 1 early-stage investor, and NeoVon.

Given the state of the real estate industry in India, he said, “We are confident that we shall be witnessing at least 10 unicorns in the next few years.”

He shared the organisation's vision for growth, which is encapsulated in the acronym G.R.O.W.T.H. As part of this vision, he emphasised the importance of the Women's Wing in leading efforts to ensure that a minimum of 20 percent of the labour workforce engaged in the construction sector in India is registered with the respective state Building and Other Construction Workers (BoCW) boards within the next two years.

He also said that for the real estate sector GROWTH also means green construction. “We need to be a lot more sustainable in the way we develop. We understand that worldwide 30 percent of pollution is contributed by the construction industry across infrastructure and real estate development. We, as an organisation, have decided that real estate will go carbon neutral by 2050.”

The women’s wing will identify and provide support to 10,000 students from families of construction workers to pursue studies in engineering, architecture and other related streams, and who aspire to enter the sector. Besides, the women’s wing will also work on improving the facilities at construction sites for the children of labourers through basic education, crèche facilities, and health check-ups, a statement by CREDAI said.

To support the government’s Start-up India and Make in India initiatives, CREDAI and CREDAI Youth Wing will organise business trade fairs and study tours in different countries.