The House of Hiranandani is the premium real estate brand in India synonymous with innovation, transparency, quality construction, superior design, and customer satisfaction. Founded by Surendra Hiranandani, this brand has altered the way living spaces are designed, thereby transforming the ethos and aesthetics of real estate in India. Pillared by a unique approach to designing and planning, the company invests heavily in research and development ensuring that each of its developments surpasses industry benchmarks and redefines value engineering and design. The buildings and supporting infrastructure are designed to ensure low maintenance, yet add value to the lives of our residents. The selection of materials is robust to ensure longevity and is passed only after stringent quality checks.
Today, the House of Hiranandani has carved a niche for itself and is synonymous with innovation, transparency, quality construction, superior design, and customer satisfaction.
Prashin Jhobalia, VP-Marketing Strategy, House of Hiranandani has over a decade of experience as a marketing professional, Prashin secured opportunities to work with some of the leading companies like Godrej Properties and Tata Housing. These opportunities helped him excel further with strong domain expertise and helped him explore new skills. With diversified exposure, today he is an expert in specializations like product development, brand strategy, pricing nuances, customer relationship management, digital, research, and media planning. Today he speaks to us about his role in the House of Hiranandani, the projects and the USP of the company, Marketing, and branding in this crisis, and much more…
Hiranandani is a trusted brand over the years when it comes to community housing, how has the journey been?
With a legacy of over 40 years in the real estate sector, the brand has come a long way. We started from scratch and with dedication and purpose-driven solutions we carved a niche for ourselves in the real estate industry. At the time of inception, we wanted to provide urban housing solutions that were holistic with the best lifestyle for our customers. Today, we take pride in being pioneers in multiple facets of housing; especially in township living that has now become a norm.
After Powai and Thane, our developments are present at multiple locations in Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Each of this development is pillared by a unique approach to designing and planning. Our projects are well thought and conceptualized before execution. We continue to invest heavily in research and development ensuring that each of our developments surpasses industry benchmarks and redefines value engineering and design.
Fine architecture, robust construction quality, new urbanism, sustainability, lavish and spacious interiors, and lifestyle amenities form the basis of our offerings. We provide a platform to live an opulent lifestyle for like-minded people, thus enabling an active social life and community living within the township, which is another highlight of our offerings. Our integrated townships are created with an inclusive approach to all these parameters that result in premium and convenient lifestyle residences for our customers.
We take pride in doing a considerable percentage of sales through references that come from the pool of our happy and satisfied customers. This instills a sense of satisfaction and motivates us to better our product further.
To date, we have delivered 21075 apartments, and a 30.30 million sq. ft (saleable) area. With our commitment to building in harmony with nature, we have planted 44,264 trees till now.
In this pandemic we saw many moving back to their hometowns, are you planning to go beyond urban areas to start projects in Tier 2 towns especially in Maharashtra?
During the pandemic, not everyone chose to move back to their hometowns. Young professionals preferred to invest in ready to move in apartments in the same city where they worked. Some even chose to upgrade to a bigger apartment to meet the new requirements after the pandemic. Along with other configurations, we saw good demand for 1 BHK ready apartment from young and single buyers. In fact, we also witnessed that customers who already owned a house chose to invest in a 1 BHK apartment to use it as an office or a spare apartment for quarantine requirements. Overall, there was a rise in demand for ready to move in apartments across configurations.
We cannot deny the infrastructure developments taking place in tier 2 and 3 towns. However, one cannot match the lifestyle offered by a tier 1 city with lifestyle in smaller towns. Hence even if professionals are shifting to smaller towns, this will be a temporary phenomenon Right now we do not have any plans for a project in smaller cities.
What is the USP of Hiranandani Housing?
A USP primarily may refer to one unique aspect of the brand, but for us, there is a range of features for which the brand is known and popular.
Here are some of the features that make us stand out from the rest.
Architecture: All House of Hiranandani townships wear a distinct look due to the unique neo-classical architecture adopted in designing the project. The aesthetically designed towers comprising architectural embellishments such as domes, cornices, jaalis, pediments provide a distinct identity to the residential township and the brand.
Construction Quality: A House of Hiranandani structure is constructed with a set of construction practices. Along with a robust product, the practices take care of regular issues generally faced in constructions after few years such as leakages, dampness, corrosion etc. Due to these construction practices a House of Hiranandani apartment does not face any of these issues and none of the structures require regular maintenance for wear and tear.
New Urbanism: With new urbanism, every development is holistically designed with inter-related patterns of land use. Pedestrian-friendly pathways, wide streets to accommodate multiple modes of road transportation, green spaces, proximity to necessary social infrastructures like education, health, shopping, and business districts are some of the striking features of a House of Hiranandani township. It promotes work-life balance with an abundant social life in which people can come together and spend quality time without leaving the vicinity. Today, the landmarks created by the House of Hiranandani are a melting pot of socio-cultural lifestyle and have redefined the way of living for the millennial.
Lifestyle Amenities: House of Hiranandani townships have redefined luxury living. They comprise a host of amenities that cater to the health and well-being of the residents and promote an active social life.
Residents can enjoy the services of Blue Turtle Clubhouse, a perfect venue for meeting like-minded people in the community. It has a fully equipped gymnasium, swimming pool, salon & spa, yoga, aerobics center and jogging tracks, and other facilities.
Sustainability: All constructions carried out by the brand take place by being in conformity with nature. The aim is to be in sync with the environment and promote and protect the native ecological balance. All our townships carry out practices such as solid waste management, wastewater treatment, rainwater harvesting, solar energy, conservation of old wells, etc.
We are the pioneers of the Miyawaki Forest concept that is now gaining popularity in the real estate sector. It is a Japanese concept that promotes dense native forest in a limited space. The approach is supposed to ensure that the plant growth is 10 times faster and the resulting plantation is 30 times denser than usual. This helps in planting a variety of plants within a short space. The plantations are done to suit the local ecology. It is because of these conditions that the plants remain protected even in adverse conditions such as cyclones.
Fine spacious apartments and decks: Every apartment created is thoughtfully designed to make the optimum use of the space available. Ample natural ventilation, sunlight is ensured in all HOH apartments along with full-length windows and a wide deck that instantly helps connect with the exterior world.
All our developments created to enable a customer to live an opulent and holistic lifestyle by taking care of social requirements, health, and wellness.
Housing projects have used print to showcase their products, during the pandemic digital has seen a huge surge, how effectively are you now using the digital platforms?
The marketing plans have now changed to being more digitally inclined to benefit from the incessant digital presence of potential customers. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are being preferred as the go-to marketing tools and channels.
The current marketing plans also provide for cost towards adopting newer technologies, imbibing new tech-oriented processes, and keeping a close watch on the technological changes that are taking place at a rapid pace. At House of Hiranandani, we deployed a series of new prop technologies like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and video walk-throughs that enabled customers to visualize the project from the comfort of their homes.
Crafting and promoting engaging films, theme-based project shoots, engaging influencers are other highly preferred options included in the marketing plans. We provided an immersive property experience for our customers, often located miles away from our projects, through 360-degree project videos, virtual site visits, and expansive location images shot through drones. We tied up with around 25 influencers with a good mix of categories and reach, and successfully created noise about or Glen Ridge Project at House of Hiranandani Hebbal, probably the first to successfully experiment with this kind of tool in the marketing segment.
What are the Marketing innovations in the new normal?
The unforeseen situation of the pandemic gave us a chance to explore, understand and experiment on the various social media platforms and execute out-of-the-box kind of ideas. We are present on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to connect with our existing and potential customers. We realized each medium has a specific purpose and audience and therefore we started tailoring our approach as per each medium to cater to our audiences efficiently.
We at House of Hiranandani are proud to be among the first to successfully experiment with the Influencer campaign for the launch of our Glen Ridge project at House of Hiranandani, Hebbal.
Webinars on varied relevant topics are the new ways of interacting and meeting with customers and stakeholders, and we have successfully adopted these mediums to connect with our customers.
We have witnessed a rise in the number of inquiries from domestic to international markets as potential buyers are spending time digitally to understand and get a feel of the property and its whereabouts. We have closed deals virtually and this can happen only when the client is satisfied and has all answers to their doubts and trust the brand name and its legacy. Today, with the ongoing situation, customers have now become quite receptive to the entire digital transition.
Are you also planning to get into affordable housing projects?
In order to meet the varied requirements of home-buyers, we do have apartments of various configurations and sizes including the ones in the aspirational category. These are 1 BHK apartments available in our township projects at Bannerghatta and Hebbal. These apartments start at an attractive pricing of Rs 42 Lakh onwards and enable the homebuyer to enjoy a branded apartment in an opulent township environment at the least cost. The buyer has access to all lifestyle amenities situated at a prominent location of the city.
OTT is seeing a lot of traction in the past 1 1/2 years, are you utilizing this platform to reach out to your audience?
OTT platforms now gain the maximum eyeballs in comparison to any other medium. Being aware of this trend, we adopted this medium for our brand communications. Instead of targeting a particular show on these platforms, we chose to be present on the Zee5 app to promote our brand video film that showcased the brand’s ideology, product, and customer experiences. We created Banners for the app where users were redirected to the Youtube video of the brand. We achieved an impressive response from the audience with 42,14,702 impressions and 3,90,700 views.
Similarly, we had created a film titled ‘Beete Din’ that made one reminisce the memories of living together with our family in the safe and secured environment of an owned apartment during the lockdown. We achieved a good response from this engagement.
The way forward and expansion plans?
We have plans for new launches in the days to come. During this lockdown, we have taken efforts to understand the buyer’s behavior and their preferences. At House of Hiranandani, we are trying to incorporate the additional workspace required during WFH or quarantine requirements in our apartments and projects in cities of Chennai, Bangalore, etc. As time progresses, we will take appropriate decisions pertaining to expansion.
