Mr. Boman Irani, Chairman and Managing Director of Rustomjee Group, on bikes and buildings.
Good afternoon, everybody. I hope after that great, heavy meal, we’re all up to about 15 minutes of hearing me out. I’ll just talk about my life story. Quite a few ups and downs, actually.
I was born and immediately got adopted. My father, who I knew as my adopted father, passed away when I was 19. Until that day, I always thought I’d be a motorcycle racer because he ran one of the three large companies in the two-wheeler automobile space. The company, Ideal Jawa India Private Limited, was our family concern. Every summer vacation, I used to go out there, and even as a little kid, two wheels absolutely caught my attention, and I used to ride a lot.
When I was 19, and he passed, I was told that one fine day I’d have to move, baggage and all, to a lovely place called Mysore. Lovely in terms of weather, lovely in terms of the way the city was laid out — horrible for a young man from Mumbai, especially to get there. It was dead at 7:30 in the evening, no place to go, and the clubs were for those who played bridge. I saw a lot of you all taking great interest in bridge and those kinds of games. But there was no place for me to party.
So, on Friday evenings, I used to pick up a motorcycle and go off to Bangalore. Bangalore had Ramaiah College of Engineering and quite a few Parsi Irani students. I hung out with them, partied a lot, and came back. On Saturday, I picked up the bike, went to Ooty in the morning, ride back to Bangalore at night, partied a lot. It would be about 2:30 or 3 a.m. by the time I reached home, and then I took Sundays off. But that being as it may, somewhere in 1994-95, the company had to shut down because we ran out of money. The first generation passed away, the second generation was all over the place, and there was no proper passing down of roles and responsibilities. It was a mess.
I came back to Mumbai and told my mother that we had a small plot of land in a faraway suburb called Dahisar, which you guys would have never been to. It was about 2,125 sqm. I told her, “Look, I have just a little bit of a pre-bid on that.” Dad had passed in 1989, and in 1990, I was put in charge of selling a very valuable property of ours in Bandra. As a 19/20-year-old likeable kid, I walked around all over the place, met brokers — and you know the brokers of that time — each one tried to lure me. Someone gave me a car and said, “Take this expensive sports car, drive it, but give the property to my guy.” I met quite a few developers, actually a lot of them, at that point in time. They were the big players at that time, and coming from engineering, I saw that these guys talked a lot from feeling. They didn’t talk from data. They had no clue what was going to happen, but they just had this absolute belief that they would make it happen.
It was interesting and I learned from that. I went back to the factory and I worked there for two and a half years. I set up two factories — one was in Izmir, Turkey, where we took motorcycle components from here and set them up there, selling them in Africa, Egypt, etc., and one in Iran, from where we exported to the Middle East. But coming back to when the factory shut down, I returned to Mumbai, took this 2,125 sqm from my mom, and said, “I think I know how to do this.” She was worried at that point because the underworld was pretty active, and she was very concerned about me.
She said, “Boman, you’re my son; if something happens to you…” But when you’re 25-26, you don’t have too much of a brain — you just have a lot of bravado. So, with that bravado, I just got into it. I said, “If somebody can do it, I can do it, and if somebody can do it, I can do it better.” I guess that is a trait that has been part of my DNA even today. I still believe if a problem is thrown at me, I grab it, because I believe life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you make of it. So, I set up my first office. It was a thatched roof with four bamboo sticks.
I should describe Dahisar to you. It was a remote, small suburb, with very small roads and not much happening. I launched the 2,125 sqm project on April 14, 1996. I would to tell people, “From chairman to watchman, there are only four people here.” I also told them, “From chairman to watchman, you cannot negotiate on the price.” At that point, negotiation was a big thing. If anybody walked into your office and you said 5,000 bucks, they would say 2,000 bucks, and then you’d arrive at 3,000. And then, “Don’t tell anyone, it’s only for you,” and all that jazz. I said, “No, none of that. This is the price, and this is how we’ll do it.” They thought I was a crazy Parsi, stuck to my guns. I said, “From chairman to watchman, there’s no change of price. You cannot know the Prime Minister of the country and still get a discount from me. You won’t get it.” This approach empowered the people doing the sales, and they were very, very happy. I mean, there was only one guy doing sales, but he knew the boss wouldn’t cut him down.
We set it up quite well from there. Here, I’d like to just say something. On the first day when I was launching the buildings, as a young man with an engineering background, I went around and studied ten thousand different names. I did not have the internet, but I used to refer to all these books to find out what a name means, why it is strong, and what the great alphabets are. So, we identified K, we identified T, we identified Z, and finally, we came up with a name called Keystone. Why Keystone? Because it’s the stone that builders often cast away but is actually the stone that holds the entire arch.
Even today, when you go to Rome, the stone that stands in any arch is actually the keystone, the stone that holds the entire structure above. It had significance and meaning. I prepared a nice 2D brochure and walked in to meet my mom. I said, “Mom, we’re launching this project, and we are calling it ABC, and my company is called Keystone.” She looked at it, looked at the brochure, and said, “Okay, looks very nice. But where’s Dad’s name on this?” So, I said, “Mom, come on, don’t be old-school. Dad’s name? Who puts that? What kind of rubbish is this? Please let me do it my way.” She said, “You have my blessings, but you won’t have me there. I’m not coming if Dad’s name is not there.” Reluctantly, I went back, changed the name, put “Rustomjee” there, called it “Rustomjee Residency,” and launched the project.
Ladies and gentlemen, one of the best decisions I and the company ever made wasn’t even made by me; it was made by my mother. The Rustomjee name had such great strength. You have to believe me when I tell you this: people had trust deficit everywhere, but on my doorstep, they actually came in. I used to ask people sometimes, “Guys, I’m a first-time builder. There are bigger builders in the neighbourhood, and you’re buying from me at a premium compared to everybody else.” They said, “Bawaji, we trust you. We know you’ll do a good job.” I said, “Boss, I’ll build it in two years.” But the one thing I did after that was every single time that I gave my word, I kept it. That’s what people expect. If you can do the bare minimum of that — give them what they were promised, live by the timelines, and honour their money like your own — you will do extremely well. That has held us in good stead.
We went through the motions, and at one point, I thought I could do no wrong. That was 2007-08. I was on a horse like Alexander, capturing whatever I could. Then the 2008 global financial crisis hit — that’s the year Lehman happened. It was a Thursday when I wrote a cheque for Rs 212 crores for a property in Virar, which I was supposed to buy for Rs 500 crores. As luck would have it, I had a PE fund that was going to come in with Rs 450 of the Rs 500 crores. They were interested in affordable housing. I had affordable housing at the core of my heart — I always knew that’s the largest part of the market and also a way to do good for the entire populace.
We were going to build about 30,000 homes out there. I was acquiring 217 acres. I wrote the cheque and sent it off. Of course, I had leveraged a property of mine because I was paying the money upfront, expecting to be replenished in three months. However, a press note did not allow them to buy properties. In three months, the fund was going to come in, replenish, and I’d pay back. I won’t take the name of the company that loaned out the money — loan sharks.
Lehman happened on Monday. I reached out to everybody and asked, “What’s happening with Lehman? What’s the issue in India?” They said, “Nothing. Chidambaram has done a great job. The financial system is solid. We are pretty well segregated, so India won’t be affected.” I said, “Okay, very good.” Then I heard something about Freddie Mac and Freddie May, or something like that. I went to the who’s who again and asked, “What’s this?” They replied, “No problem, no problem.” I went to the fund that was supposed to put in the money, and they told me, “Oh, don’t worry. It’s a little delayed — three months will become four, four will become five.” Litigation started because I hadn’t paid the money.
That’s when, again, I said, “I’ve given my word.” I went back to the developer who had sold me the property and said, “Listen, buddy, I don’t have the money, but I made you a promise. Now tell me how we can resurrect this.” He said, “Rs 212 crores are forfeited.” I said, “You can’t do that. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll develop the entire property for you — 50-50. You don’t have to put up the land.” And that’s exactly what I did. He bought my story, and I think he’s extremely happy for it. We’ve developed 217 acres. We are in the last leg of it right now. We’ve developed close to around 20,000-22,000 homes, and the last 8,000-8,500 homes will be built now. We just completed the project.
Now, while I was doing all of this, going through my ups and downs, at all points of time, yes, the brand Yazdi was my father’s brand. There was something called Yazdani & Company, which was actually my mother’s father’s company that sold something called Bluebird biscuits. I’ve never seen those biscuits in my life, but I’ve seen a board of it. Yazdani was a company that, when my mother’s father went bankrupt, he sold to my father. My father took it up from there. He imported BMWs at that point in time, imported Jawas. His story was also of great grit and determination, a great fight in life. At 14, I believe, he lost his father. He brought his mother, his younger brother, and one sister to Mumbai and started off as a bouncer at a little bar behind Citibank. He took a small shop nearby, repaired motorcycles at night, and put his brother through education. All those stories stayed with me. Throughout my entire endeavour — making money, losing money in real estate — this one thing stayed: I wanted to get this motorcycle back on Indian streets. No matter how much I tried, I kept failing.
I had tried in 1997-98. I went to the Wall Street Journal at that point of time, who were the big boys, and took them to Mysore, showed them the plant. I heard Hyundai was setting up a plant in Manesar, so I somehow reached out — there was no internet at that point. I literally had to make trips everywhere, find out who the key people were, pick them up, and bring them to my factory. I said, “We’ve got the best factory.” Innocent me didn’t know they had much better setups, but I said, “Come here, do this.” And the Japanese, true to tradition, photographed everything — here, there, and everywhere. One week later, I got a letter saying, “You’ve got a great company, but we already built this, so we will not partner with you.”
Failure after failure, my determination didn’t waver. I just said, “I will do it, and I will do it someday.” They say, for that which you pray, that which you believe in, and that which you desire with your heart, the whole world will find a way of giving it to you. I believe that. And in 2015, Anand Mahindra called me up and said, “Hey, Boman, I didn’t know you were the promoter of the brand Yazdi.” I said, “You never asked, I never told you. But what’s the deal?” He said, “I’m sending someone to meet you.” Normally, I don’t wear suits. He asked me to wear a suit that day. I usually wear a shirt and pants, but I wore a suit that day because Anand Mahindra was sending someone to meet me.
Pretty interesting story. At about two o’clock, my EA comes running in and says, “There’s this guy in a kurta with long flowing hair, looking unkempt, and he wants to meet you. He says he’s from Anand Mahindra’s office.” So, I said, “If he’s from Anand’s office, send him right in.” He comes in, wearing an Om kurta — you know, those small kurtas with Om symbols on them. He had a mala around his neck, long flowing hair. He looked like he’d just come back from Varanasi and was trying to be a Babaji. But the guy turned out to be my lifelong friend after that. He walked in and said, “We want to buy the brand.” You could tell from his tone that he was US-educated. He said, “I want to buy the brand, blah blah blah.” I said, “Fine.” I walked out and said, “Let me draft a letter for you.” He thought I was going to talk to my legal team and draft some nice, long legal note. But in all simplicity, I just told my EA, “Draft a one-pager that says this brand called Yazdi belongs to so-and-so, Anand Mahindra and Anupam Tharaja, and they can do as they please.” I brought the letter in and gave it to him. I said, “Take this.”
I could see the shock in his eyes. He thought that he’s here to buy a brand, he’s got a cheque in his pocket, he’s gonna tempt me, and here I am giving it away. So I told him, “Listen, brother, the one thing I wanted to do is put Yazdi back on Indian roads, and that is the day I’ll be the happiest man in the world. It doesn’t matter if I’m a part of it or not, but here’s the deal: I want to be a part of it. You tell me what I have to do.” This guy literally, you know, all shocked, walks out of there. He doesn’t say anything to me. He says, “Okay, okay, we’ll talk. I’ll have to talk to Anand, etc.”
Twenty minutes later, Anand calls up and says, “Boman, I think Anupam has realised what a Bawa really is.” And he says, “Mad people are only Punjabis and Bawas, so you’ve got a deal. Whatever you talked to him about, I’m in.” So, it made me super happy, and after that, I spent a lot of time building the motorcycle. In the sense that I didn’t have the skills these guys had, but what I had was the feeling. I could feel my motorcycle; I knew exactly how it operates. I’ve been riding it all my life, and when they spoke to me and we conducted classrooms like this, as they called it, where we brought in the old riders, it was a pretty interesting journey for me because I learned a lot from my real estate business also.
They brought in all these old users of motorcycles — Jawa, Yazdi motorcycles — spoke to them about the key features, and then I related that back to my business. I’ll come to that in a bit, but I kind of heard all of that, and you know, till today my hair stands on end when I think about how passionate people are about their automobiles. And that’s when one of them said something so beautiful it stayed with me. He said, “Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul.” He says, “It is true when people say that their motorcycle is like a member of their family, sometimes taking second place or, in a Bawa’s case, first place, even ahead of his wife.” It’s a fact — people are so passionate, those who ride motorcycles.
Coming back to 2018, we launched the Jawa, and I choked on stage and said, “Somewhere up there, Rustom Irani is going to be a happy man today to see the Jawa back on Indian roads.” And then we were hit with COVID. So, adversity is always something I have faced. In 2018, we launched the brand; in 2019, we brought it on the roads, hardly 10-15,000 motorcycles on the streets. Then in March 2020, COVID hit. Factories were shut, everything was over, the world had ended. My real estate business also — I was scared. I said, “Boss, what’s gonna happen? No one’s gonna buy homes, no one’s gonna buy offices. We’re in trouble.” For 15 days, I went into a shell, and then again, you know, a builder always has this blood group, always facing adversity. He always says something better will come out of this, so he’s got to be positive no matter what. So I have the “be positive” blood group. Fifteen days later, I said, “Let’s take it on.”
From that day on, we conducted online interactions and Zoom. I’m not very good with technology, but somehow my kids were there with me. They put me on Zoom, and I was speaking to my people on a regular basis, constantly interacting with them. I had no idea what I was, you know, promising them. But I promised them one thing: before any one of them went down, it would be me. Till the last day, I’d be standing ahead of all those guys, and I would face all the brickbats, etc. I said, “Don’t worry, this is not the end, though it seems like it is. It’s not the end.”
Just the promise of a better tomorrow brought the whole team together. We did more in that particular time than we’d done in the eight or 10 years prior to that. And a whole sea of change in the way our organisation worked — we were a lot more aligned, spearheading into the future. We had already taken a call to cut down debt. We were very heavy on debt in the company, so we decided to cut it down majorly. We took all the measures it required to cut down debt.
I had a lovely bunch of boys called Forum in YPO. I spoke to them. We did what we had to do, but we did it with a little difference. Every person working with me at that point in time and had to be let go — I kind of spoke to at least 10 people to try and get that guy a job. I said, “Listen, he’s a great guy. I’m in trouble, but that doesn’t mean you are.” And there were certain businesses that were flourishing. I said, “You can take him on.” We kept them on the insurance policy that our company had, so they were taken care of. Their families were taken care of for the next one and a half to two years, per the policy decision we took. We kind of took care of them.
The idea was you cannot let people go, and I was seeing some people, you know, left, right, and centre, just dropping people like hot potatoes — not bothering about them and their lives. I think all these things really held us in good stead. A lot of developers – because at that point, I was also part of the fraternity and today I lead it as president – they used to kind of reach out and say, “Really, are you going to do this?” I said, “Look, they’re human beings, man. You’ve got to take care of them. And these things will come back.” Then the market swung up.
Somebody was asking me today, “We had an oversupply, and you see all these buildings in Bombay and this, that, the other. What happened during COVID?” One of the most remarkable things was that the concept of YOLO was born, right? You only live once. People started putting money into life and lifestyle. They stopped saving money only for the next generation. There was one more term that has come out right now: it’s “spending kids’ inheritance.” Most people have decided they want to live a full life. I’m telling you, the world changed during COVID. People started considering themselves as important, and then we came up with one more phrase: earlier, people bought homes and fit their families into them. Today, they will buy homes that are fit for their families. And when people start thinking like that, they are always going to buy the best.
And I’ll tell you why we’re not in oversupply: because for a very long time, developers in Mumbai unfortunately only worked according to the rules and regulations — trying to squeeze in more FSI, just trying to sell you whatever they built, and you also bought it. Why did you buy it? Because, “Oh my god, the location is damn good. Oh my god, this price will go up. Oh my god, I don’t know.”
This “I don’t know” has got to be eradicated. Today, every developer — and thanks to RERA, I would say largely — is an open book. You can literally, as buyers, know the size of my balance sheet, know what I pay myself, know what I pay, how well-capitalised I am for a project — know everything about the project you’re going to buy. I’m not saying there is zero risk, but at least your risk has been minimised. Secondly, at that point, people started taking design into consideration. I still remember when I used to go to my architect’s office, and they would say, “Bhai, idhar se 4 square foot kam kardo, idhar se 2 square foot kam kardo.” You don’t understand, I have to sell this. This is the price range; I cannot go more than that, and then I want to take more money. It was a stupid world. At that point in time, we were fortunate.
And here, I’d like to speak about the automobile industry — the study back from when I sat in those classrooms and talked to people: what really appeals to people about that motorcycle? Right, that’s what you’re touching. What really appeals to you as a homeowner? You want a balcony. You guys are South Mumbai guys, you have nice, large balconies. I said, “Boss, a balcony is the most important thing.” We also did a little study. We went back to, and we still do this, go back to all the residents of our buildings, take a sample size, and sit with them. We still do it the old-fashioned way. We spend half a day with them.
We ask them, “We built a, you know, storage room, whatever. Do you use it as a temple? Is someone using it as a storage room? Is someone using it for whatever else?” We learned from them what they want. We had started building homes with balconies, and our apartments just flew off the shelf. They just flew off the shelf because people wanted those balconies. They realised that during COVID, the one outing they really had was on their balcony. They could sit and have a cup of chai in their balcony. How much would they sit inside their house?
So, we went back, and I’m saying now all developers, we went back to what is the essence of a home. We went back to design, which is the key. Architecture is all about design. People had forgotten that in Mumbai because we were surrounded by people who were only doing one thing, like sheep — herd mentality. Everyone’s going into FSI, everyone’s trying to fit more in, it doesn’t matter, we’ll reduce the height, etc. It all changed.
And you know, maybe 50 years later, someone will make a series and tell us about the ill effects or what was the game played on us. And I still think it was a game played on us, this entire COVID bit. But at some point, I’m very happy that the world had to go through this because everybody’s changed. People want to live today. And that’s where real estate really took off. And today, I’m happy to state that people understand there is competition — healthy competition — but there’s a lot of cooperation, which is so essential, right? With the market being the size that it is, today developers are cooperating with one another and working together based on each other’s strengths. I can sell well, you can build well, someone else can get approvals, someone else has land. Coming together — of course, with like-minded people — be very certain to get a good lawyer, and put a proper document in place. You know, get the right ingredients in, and success will follow. There is no end to the amount of success.
And, again, two or three things have stood me in great stead, and I’d like to share them. You all may not need it, but the one thing I have done is, at all points in time, decided to honour my word. It doesn’t matter—if you’ve said it, you live by it, and you will pay for it. It has paid me back. And here, I want to share a story of a great guy. I think you all know him — Gulam Noon sir.
I met him because I lost my father when I was 19, and I used to look up to father figures. I’m from the school of hard knocks, right? I’ve learned everything in life by actually going and knocking my head against it and saying, “What is it made of?” I met this gentleman called Sir Gulam Noon. I was redeveloping his aunt’s building in Bandra. I met him and was very impressed by how he conducted himself — the kind of person he was. I went up to him and said, “Why don’t I come and just work for you for six months for free? I’ll be the person that gives you your morning cup of tea and your night chocolate if you want. I just want to be around you, shadow you.” This term “shadow” is big nowadays — people want to shadow entrepreneurs. I told him that at that point in time, but he didn’t give me that opportunity, unfortunately.
But he taught me a few things every time he came to Mumbai. And one of the things he told me was a story that stayed with me. He said that when he was young, he went from here to the UK with 50 or 150 pounds in his pocket, set up a big empire, then went to America to try to set up there, had some success and some failure, came back to the UK, and decided to set up a very big plant. And, you know, maybe I’m adding some drama to it, but the way I remember it is when the plant was ready, and the morning it was going to be inaugurated, the plant burnt down. And he said, “The first thing I did when I heard that was land up there at seven in the morning and put up a big placard. The plant is burnt, I am not. There will be a new plant here next year.” He said, “Boman, that one sign of confidence I had — that I will not take your money and cheat you or that your money is not sunk — made the same people who had earlier given me 100 give me 200 this time around. They said, ‘We value your integrity, your strength, your ability.’ And this, if I can pass on one legacy to my children, it will only be this: Be the person standing for what is right.” In the words of your Rotarian Ratan Tata, “It’s not easy to do the right thing, but it is absolutely important to do the right thing.” So, at all points of time, I hope I’m always in a position to do the right thing.
I will always be positive because developers have problems morning, noon, and night. Some of us who are associated with the industry know that the government just takes knee-jerk reactions. I’m fortunate to be part of this body called CREDAI, where we can interact with the government and keep passing on our learnings to them.
On the other side, motorcycling makes me extremely happy. Most Sundays, when I’m free, you’ll find me out of the house by six o’clock. There’s another developer here; I can see him. At six o’clock in the morning, I’m out. Those of you that have homes in Lonavala or Khandala can invite me for a cup of coffee. I’ll come, we’ll have a cup of coffee — nothing more. Maybe some eggs if you give us, and we’ll ride back and be home by 1:30. That’s my refreshment. Otherwise, I hope I die with my boots on. And yeah, that’s me, that’s the story, guys. I’m very happy to be here this afternoon. This guy made it sound like a walk in the park. He said, “Come, I’ll give you lunch, talk to a few of us.” And I took up the offer. Then I saw so many chairs out here! I said, “Get me a vodka, quick!” — which he didn’t. Which he didn’t. And here I am in front of you.
So that’s my story, guys. I hope there is some amount of connection we will have in the future, and I hope to learn from you as well.
Whoever knows my wife, please don’t tell her I didn’t mention her throughout the speech. She’s been the inspiration, she’s been the strength of my life. See? Someone record that, please.
ROTARIANS ASK
Boman, great talk, fabulous story. I wanted to ask you, you didn’t conclude about what happened to your motorcycle brand after COVID. Is it still coming back on the road, or what’s happening there?
Oh, fantastic. Yes, we are on the road right now. As a matter of fact, our productions are way up. We are crossing 50,000 this year. We’ve got three brands under our belt: the Jawa, which is a Czech brand. Very interesting story — if you give me a minute, I’ll tell you. Then the Yezdi, which is also on the roads, and the BSA, which we launched last year in the UK, in Birmingham, because that is the brand — Birmingham Small Arms. They manufactured guns earlier and then started manufacturing motorcycles much later. So yes, that brand was launched last year in the UK, and now we’re back on Indian roads as of the 15th of August. Kind of a reverse colonisation. We launched it out here, and it’s been a great run so far. We’re seeing great success. This Dussehra and, hopefully, this Diwali, we will have fantastic sales of motorcycles.
Just a little story on Jawa. I should tell you, Jawa is still not my brand in the sense that we’ve kind of got it for 30 years from the owners of the brand. There’s a very proud man in the Czech Republic called Mr. Gerle. The first time my team went to him — because I could not make that trip — they were negotiating with him about Jawa. This man speaks perfect English but refuses to speak in English. He uses a translator right there, employing a Japanese school of management style he’s learned from. So, he communicates through the translator and he was being very tough. He said, “Who are you? What are you? India, this, that, and the other.”
Next trip, I went, and again, the same tone — “Who are you? What are you made of?” As he spoke, I was looking at the wall behind him. This is my habit — I’m looking at the person but also at the wall behind. And I see a picture of my father on a motorcycle in his original plant. Now, this man is not the original owner of Jawa because Jawa (Yava, as it’s called out there) was a brand of the government. Motokov used to be the company that owned it. He bought the brand as late as maybe ’96 or ’97 when all the brands were being sold from the government to individuals. He was very proud of his brand, though he didn’t understand the business much.
So, I let him speak and then I said, “Do you know what that picture is?” This guy turns around and says, “Oh, that? That is my Indian partner, Mr. Rustom Irani, a very good fellow.” I said, “Did you ever meet him?” He said, “No, but I’ve heard such great stories about him. Why do you ask?” I said, “I call him Dad. He’s no more, but I call him Dad.” You have to believe me, that tough man went from absolute steel to total butter in one second. He turned to me and said, “Really? You are the son of Rustom Irani?” I said, “Yes.” His entire demeanour changed. Within a day, we had a contract ready, and we signed off for 30 years. So that’s the power of, I guess, just the legacy or the story of doing the right thing at all points in time.
It’s great to see you on the dais, Boman, and I always joke with you that maybe you’re in the wrong industry — you should be in Bollywood or Hollywood. But how did you build up your construction team? What traits did you look for in people because our industry is different? Were there Parsi traits, discipline, or something else? And second question: What makes you tick — vodka on the rocks or the smell of cement in the air?
So, two things, right? And you know it better than me. The one thing that I know is that I know nothing. Seriously, it’s a fact. As long as you have the ability to learn, which is what I have. Because, as I told you, I come from the School of Hard Knocks. I’m happy to listen to somebody talking about medicine, art, or exercise—because I’m always learning. And I’ve had the good fortune of attracting the right talent around me, being at the right place at the right time, and having the guts to stand up every time and say, “I’m here no matter what.”
Not too many people want to do everything themselves, and I’m one of them. I actually don’t want to do anything if it’s possible. I think it was Steve Jobs who said, ‘We hire people and then tell them what to do,’ which is typically a builder trait. I am happy to hire a team and tell them: You’ve been hired; you can do what you want, but if you’re doing this, do it like this — this is what I’ve learned, this is how you’ll do it, and come back to me and tell me you did it this way.
I’ve never ever had that desire, never. Because if I hired an engineer, I’m hoping that he understands more than me. Of course, I’ll sit down with him, talk to him, and see some of his past work, then go by the fact that he’s achieved all of this, so he’s going to achieve more for us. Give him the perfect working environment to be in. Even today, I think we have an open-door policy at Rustomjee, and we allow most of the people to come and talk to me.
If you come to my office, you’ll be surprised. I sit in the same-sized cabin as everybody else — not for long, these guys are changing that — but the same-sized cabin as everyone else. My door is open; it’s a glass door. I’m very happy to interact on all levels. When I go to my sites, I’m happy to walk around. It’s truly about keeping it simple. Just keep it simple. You do not know everything. Everybody is a team. Everybody wants to do a good job. You just have to give them a platform and the right kind of support system.
And you really want to know what makes me tick? Actually, it’s neither the cement in the air nor the vodka on the rocks; it’s just being on a bike and feeling the wind in my hair, but that’s about right there.
That was really inspiring. Mr. Irani, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned the balconies of South Bombay, but I’m sure you’ve noticed that most of them are now all covered in closed balconies. One reason, I think, is that if you look out from your balconies, you see large tracts of slums that have come up. What is the plan that CREDAI has in store for the redevelopment of slums in an effective manner?
Change is the one thing that our city has seen, and change is the only constant. Get ready for a much greater velocity of change going forward. Some of you are not going to be too happy seeing a lot of buildings come up, and sometimes it’s painful, right, to have a building being developed right next to you? And we understand that, but we kind of have to do it. We, at Rustomjee, I don’t know which of you read this, but when one of our buildings in Pali Hill, when the neighbours complained to us that we were making a lot of noise, we kind of brought in these insulated, how do I call it, protections for where our piles were being made. Not that the sound got to zero, but the sound got cut down hugely, and we were hugely appreciated. I think the supplier of that is now like on fire because he’s been able to sell them.
Look, change in this city took place actually when nobody was watching. The slums that proliferated out here happened when people needed housing, and there was no proper policy for housing at that point in time. We decided to swish that away under the carpet. All of us, all of us are to blame for it. We were very happy taking the cheapest labour and bringing them home because they didn’t have enough, you know, to cover the costs of living. They didn’t have to buy a home, etc. You come to any part of the world, right, where they take care of people; the government or the people themselves are building homes. That is a change taking place today.
Like it or not, there are enough rules, and you will agree with me that, you know, inclusive housing is being pushed. Of course, developers are still finding a way out of it because nobody — I’m sure you don’t want in your building, you know, I would like to say a driver or someone living because, you know, you’re living in a 5000 sq ft apartment. You don’t want a 500 sq ft apartment there. But having said that, enough and more is being done now. We will, if we are given an opportunity, I can say this with all confidence, eradicate the slums of Mumbai in 15 years. We will take care of every last slum. I don’t know if that will continue to happen. This government is pretty keen. I think even if there’s a change in government, they will not change the pace of it. So in 15 years’ time, if I’m standing here and we are all talking, you can hold me to it. But we have eradicated a large number of slums in Mumbai and we have built affordable housing, which we’re still working with the government on various runs: GST, this, that, and the other.
I know it’s very difficult to build it. But with the infrastructure growth that’s taking place, the mobility coming in through metros, train enhancements, coastal roads, and the road being promised to go all the way up to Virar, I would say, see if I can move people from Virar to South Mumbai in about 45 minutes, which I can do if it is an entire coastal road, I’d be able to build enough and more affordable housing and create an environment out there for those people. Having said that, the project that I’m working on in central Mumbai, if I do get it, is a 35-acre redevelopment in which I will — I think we will be — we will need to build, by government regulation, close to around 8,000 homes for the labour class. I mean, that’s for people who cannot afford very expensive homes. And the answer is actually in rental housing, which we should all — I don’t think you all should, but we as developers will keep working on – rental housing is going to be a very big way of taking care of the population that today lives in slums. It’s not easy. We are working towards that. We will succeed, maybe in 15 years, maybe in 20, but definitely work in that direction is on. I have nothing else to say.
I don’t like people living in squalor. I don’t enjoy seeing the people who work in our homes not having a home. And as a matter of fact, one of the worst things that — and we keep talking to our developer fraternity also is, you know, people who build your homes, how do they live? They live in absolute squalor. They’re living in the basements of our buildings. They’re living where there’s no sunlight for their children. I mean, it’s an act of government now, and, you know, your labour lawyer out here, Mr. Sandeep Puri, will tell you, you’ve got to literally actually take care of these people. Otherwise, what are you doing? You’re building your palaces on their graves, in a way. And it’s not acceptable.
So we, at CREDAI, are constantly making changes towards that. We are constantly advising our people, our developers. Some of them are doing it. Some of them are going to take some more time to do it. And maybe in time to come, I will not need to house my labour in my building. I’ll be able to house them in Cheetah Camp or somewhere in Chembur and bring them to South Mumbai, have them build here, and literally go back to their homes.
And here, I just want to tell you what we did in Virar. We were building 5,500 homes at a go in Virar as our first phase when I took over that project. And we had 4,000 labourers there. And those 4,000 labourers were from Odisha, West Bengal, Telangana, and Rajasthan. We built four dorms for them. You understand dorms? I tied up with Hare Krishna at that point in time to serve meals to them because veg meals, etc. I just wanted to understand how they kind of produced that kind of food every day to serve all those people — 4,000 people — because I couldn’t keep them in Virar because they, you know, they weren’t used to living out there; even they wanted the South Mumbai lifestyle. But we kept 4,000 people there. We had the same mess kind of system or student accommodation. We had huge halls like this in the ground-floor lobby. We had a huge mess. We had centralised kitchens for them. We served different types of meals for these people because, you know, taste is very important for the four different areas where they came from. We had entertainment. I know we bought TVs and we put up TVs everywhere in the hall so that they could see it during their morning cup of tea, their afternoon lunch, their evening chai, and their night dinner. And once a week, I hope no one from GST is out here, once a week we even provided them alcohol for those that would drink just to keep them there, and you have to believe me, their homes were absolutely top-notch.
I would not say top-notch; there were six of them living in one room, almost like this, but they were taken care of. We had a crèche out there that took care of their children. So our school out there was providing the teachers on a regular rotational basis. You know, it’s very easy to do good, and you just have to provide a platform. It wasn’t me; it was the teachers of that school that decided that if you have a crèche, we will kind of volunteer our time, and it really worked like clockwork. We don’t have that kind of space everywhere. We’re doing the same in Thane right now. We’re building about 2,000 homes. We’ve got an entire labour colony — not as good as the one we had in Virar, but we have a labour colony out there again with the same principle. We’re building. We’re providing them all the essentials of life so they can keep working for us, and it actually works for you. People think that, and you guys do a lot of charity. I don’t think charity is done for them; it is done for us. We are actually better off when we do more for them, and the doctor — thank you very much for going and doing those eye operations. I really think it’s a — I always look up to people who give their time because I can’t. Some of us are just destined to give our money, but people like you should actually be put up on a stage and felicitated time and again.