Estancia to propel Arun Excello to a different league

Venkatachari Jagannath
30 April 2007

Chennai: It is his customers ''walk'' to their destinations, offices, mall or school- that the P Suresh, 49, managing director, Arun Excello Infrastructure Pvt Ltd expects would propel him into the bigger real estate league.

The Rs100-crore turnover group that sold over 1,000 residential apartments promoting 19 projects, is planning to double that number in a single project called Estancia. An integrated township project, it comprises an IT park, school, shopping mall, hotel and serviced apartments coming up at Vallencheri, on GST Road near Chennai.

Undoubtedly, the Rs1,500 crore project on a 78-acre plot is a Hanuman jump for the group headed by this mechanical engineer from Guindy Engineering College, Chennai and an MTech from IIT, Kharagpur. All these years the group was promoting projects in the band of 3-4 acres.

A first-generation entrepreneur, Suresh started his career with Voltas Limited. Five years later in 1986 after gaining project construction experience at Voltas Refrigeration, he along with his brother, brother-in-law and cousin promoted Arun Excello Fabricators, a turnkey contractor building oil storage tanks, distribution lines and others within and outside India. With its experience in civil construction gained they ventured into real estate development in 1996.

While their focus was on residential apartments alone, the young entrepreneurs took in the changes in Chennai''s real estate. The demand for IT office space was going up dramatically, fuelling the demand for residential space, which attracted big operators like DLF, Raheja, Hiranandani and others landed in the city with big projects.

"Given this scenario, survival for us meant scaling up," says Suresh. He decided to acquire the required land 35km away from Chennai while others were putting up township projects in the vicinity of Chennai''s IT highway, the Old Mahabalipuram Road. "The area is congested and does not have the necessary social infrastructure," he says. As a matter of fact, the group sold its land in that area.