Dear Shareholders,
The past couple of years have been one of the most challenging and
uncertain times experienced across the globe. As we continue to emerge out of this phase,
I hope all of you and your loved ones continue to be safe and well.
The Government led by the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji,
rose to the occasion by successfully rolling out one of the biggest vaccination drives
across the globe and proactive economic policies which continue to steer the Indian
economy towards a strong recovery.
Housing segment continues to witness strong demand well supported by
tailwinds from the fundamental demand drivers. Structural recovery in housing demand
should continue with sustained demand momentum led by increasing urbanisation, improving
affordability, positive consumer sentiments and growing aspirational needs. Consolidation
amongst larger and credible brands continues to be a key trend in the housing segment,
primarily driven by increasing consumer confidence towards such brands, significantly
improved balance sheets and strong ability to provide high quality, safe and sustainable
ecosystems.
India's attractiveness as a competitive services market coupled with
strong hiring trends by the technology sector and global captives should continue to lead
growth across the office segment. Retail business exhibited strong rebound during the
fiscal with marked improvement in the footfalls and consumption across the portfolio
supported by strong recovery in the luxury segment and growth of international brands.
I am happy to inform you that, despite the hardships faced in the
recent past, your Company exhibited strong resilience during this challenging phase and
has come out even stronger, delivering a strong performance across all key parameters
during the fiscal. In FY22, we recorded one of the highest new sales bookings in the last
decade across our development business. We continue to put greater emphasis on free cash
flow generation and consequently we were able to achieve significant debt reduction during
the fiscal.
Our new products continue to receive encouraging response from the
market. Enthused by the growing demand coupled with sustained tailwinds supporting the
housing demand, we remain committed and focused on scaling up our business by continuously
bringing newer and diversified offerings to the market.
Our rental business withstood this challenging phase and is now
steadily recovering to normalcy. We continue to maintain a positive outlook towards the
rental business and consequently are judicially deploying capital to further strengthen
and grow the office portfolio by developing safe and sustainable workplaces across
geographies including Gurugram, Chennai and Noida.
Given the recovery across the retail segment and consumption trends in
our country, we have also initiated development of the next line of retail destinations
across multiple geographies. We hope to double our retail presence in the next 4-5 years
with these additions.
We recognise that it is imperative to create an agile, professional and
diversified organisation to deliver consistent and profitable growth. We have
significantly stepped up our organisational capabilities in the last few years to ensure
our human capital is aligned with the business growth. We have reinvigorated our
leadership teams and ensured that a talented workforce is in place to support them. In
alignment with our growth plans, we have further strengthened our project management and
sales teams to ensure strong execution and scaling up across our business. We have also
enhanced our digital capabilities by upgrading our ERP and we believe this digital
transformation will lead to operational excellence and enhanced analytics to further
improve decision making.
On the backdrop of a robust performance across both businesses, healthy
cash flow generation and our commitment to enhance shareholders value, the Board has
recommended a higher dividend pay-out for this fiscal for your approval. We remain focused
and committed towards enhancing shareholder value.
We continue to do business responsibly and strive to create safe and
sustainable ecosystems. Community development remains the core of what we do. We continue
to nurture relationships with the communities that we operate in and strive to enhance
their quality of life through various CSR initiatives, job openings, social, environmental
and economic recovery. As a testament to our ESG initiatives, we were, for the second year
consecutively, included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices in the emerging markets
category. We are the only real estate company from the country to be a constituent in this
index. GRESB, a global standard for ESG benchmarking and reporting for real and
infrastructure assets, awarded a 5-star rating and overall regional sector leader
demonstrating our history of strong governance and focused initiatives for the betterment
of the society.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my fellow Board members
for their continued guidance, all our employees for their unrelenting commitment and our
stakeholders for their unflinching support during these challenging times.
While macro factors such as inflationary pressures, geopolitical
tensions and rising interest rates pose new challenges, your Company is well poised to not
only withstand such temporary dislocations but to deliver consistent and profitable
growth. Our healthy balance sheet, diversified product offerings and strong cash flow
generation provides an opportunity to further leverage this upcycle.
With best wishes, |
Sincerely, |
Rajiv Singh |
Chairman |