Indian affordable housing giant to launch in UK

One of India’s fastest growing residential property developers, Xrbia, is to launch in the UK in a bid to help tackle the extreme housing crisis.

Related topics:  Business
Warren Lewis
3rd January 2017
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Founded by 41-year-old entrepreneur Rahul Nahar in 2012, Xrbia’s first project consisted of 3,500 houses forming a 120-acre ‘future-ready’ city in India. It has already built over 15,000 homes, has a pipeline of 100,000 and aims to deliver 100 future-ready cities in India by 2030.

Xrbia is now bringing its scale efficiencies and expertise in affordable housebuilding to the UK, and is seeking joint venture opportunities with UK property developers with social housing experience to leverage their local market expertise.

Initially, Xrbia will focus on building homes in London, where the housing crisis is most extreme. With its cutting-edge construction technology, based on a hybrid of steel framing and concrete form work that produces homes at low cost within short timeframes, Xrbia has managed to slash build times to just six months.

In addition, all utilities are delivered via renewable sources, with water, electricity and sewage recycled and controlled through customers’ smartphones. Meanwhile, Internet of Things technology powers a customer portal, access, security and billing systems. The entire system operates on the SAP ERP system, a world-leading platform for business processes.

In India, Xrbia’s standard product is a seven-storey building with apartments of 40 square meters. In London, Xrbia is setting out to deliver these ‘micro’ homes at a cost of around £80,000 and will support them with numerous finance packages, including a rent-to-own facility.

Rahul Nahar, Xrbia founder, comments: “We have been researching Western markets in depth and, given the extent of the housing crisis in the UK and dearth of affordable accommodation, feel our low-cost and technology-led construction model could have a very positive impact on the volume and type of homes being built.

We are looking to work with forward-thinking social housing developers who have moved on from the legacy approaches that are holding back a number of more established players. To build the number of homes the UK needs is not just about bricks and mortar but fundamental changes in philosophy and process.”

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