Projectwell Wins Et Power Of Ideas

By Author: Pritesh Bagwe
Total Articles: 14
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Projectwell’s R&D initiatives are getting due recognition in India and abroad. In October 2012, Projectwell was honoured as a winner in the program called “Economic Times Power of Ideas”. This is a joint initiative by the Department of Science & Technology, the Centre for Incubation Innovation and Entrepreneurship of IIM Ahmedabad and India’s leading business newspaper, the Economic Times. The program is a collective mission to identify, recognize and support home grown innovations in India. It is one of India’s premium initiatives which attempts to lay down a supportive platform comprising of Government, the University system and Investors, well supported by the media. Such a catalytic forum, which supports entrepreneurship, is the need of the hour in India, where innovation and entrepreneurship, despite the best intentions of Governments, is still not looked upon as a viable career option by many.

Projectwell’s winning innovation is a process change for the way houses are constructed in India, in an effort to reduce the increasing demand supply gap in the housing industry. Different reports peg ...
... the shortage at 26 million units, and this is constantly rising. Conducted jointly with award winning American Architectural design and research firm, KieranTimberlake, the two year old R&D initiative has resulted in a unique process of making houses in India ‘offsite’ by resorting to a component based manufacturing approach to housing. About 80% of the proposed housing units will be completed away from the actual site and brought to site in a finished state and installed on site. This will reduce the time of construction by over 70% and allow consistency in quality. The housing units themselves will be sustainable in nature, ensuring a comfortable temperature inside the dwelling at all times of the day and during all seasons.

It is not only the construction technique which is new. Projectwell’s initiative is to have a completely new ecosystem, wherein an end customer can buy a house in the same way as buying a car; i.e. off the shelf. The housing units are standardized with a small degree of customization built in. Each unit is pre-engineered and pre-priced; so there is no discrepancy between what a buyer selects and what he gets. The solution will come packaged with finance and all other necessary paperwork including insurance as well.

Made of concrete panels, the housing units are scalable. Whilst they can be single story houses or multi-storied apartments, they are scalable over a period of time.

About Sibani Sarma

Sibani Sarma is an MBA with a degree in Architecture, spent fifteen years in research and consultancy in real estate and construction. She writes on subjects related to Real Estate Funding in India and Development Management in India