M Murali, Managing Director, Shriram Properties, spoke to BusinessLine on how demonetisation has affected the real estate sector and how the company is shaping its strategies to counter the after-effects. Excerpts:

How has demonetisation impacted the real estate sector?

Demonetisation is not going to affect real estate in a big way. But the sector will get impacted in a different way for different reasons. Demonetisation is only a small tool. But there are other things which are likely to impact the sector, which people are not talking about. These are the Real Estate Regulatory Authority, new accounting standards for real estate companies, Benami Act, GST and now demonetisation. These five points are going to play a major role in re-shaping the realty industry. Re-shaping doesn’t mean prices coming down, according to me, it will clean the system.

In this demonetisation phase, what is Shriram Properties’ plan, especially on its capex?

Currently, we are present in Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, and Kolkata. We have got close to about 100 million square feet in our portfolio now. We will go aggressive on affordable housing, especially to take advantage of Prime Minister Modi’s housing for all by 2022 policy. We will be focusing fully on affordable housing and that’s going to be delivered in the next five to seven years.

How much of 100 million square feet is affordable housing?

Slightly over 90 per cent is residential, rest is commercial. Of this 90 per cent, again 80 per cent is mid-market housing and affordable housing and about 15-20 per cent is luxury segment. Our focus will be on mid-market and affordable housing, that’s how we have been doing it, we’ll continue doing that.

What kind of progress has Shriram Properties achieved in terms of affordable and mid-market housing?

So far, we have delivered close to 15,000 homes, of which majority is in the mid-market segment and affordable housing. We have created new markets in various locations where we are in business.