Realty event to stir up key discussion points

The following is the text of an interview with Vineet Aggarwal, Senior Vice-President, Assocham, and Managing Director, Transport Corporation of India Limited:

Question: Assocham and MoHUA have announced India’s first Realty and Sustainability Confluence and Awards. Please tell us about some of the key issues that this event will cover and how do you foresee the future editions contributing towards this sector.

Answer: Assocham has been quite actively promoting various sectors that have been recently hit by the ongoing pandemic. Real estate sector, as we are aware was doing quite well right before this pandemic hit us. As the Government started opening the economy gradually, real estate and construction sectors also witnessed some movement.

A national and annual platform like Assocham Realty & Sustainability Confluence and Awards will not only acknowledge but also reward the accomplishments and contributions of the leaders and achievers of the real estate sector. This platform will also stir up some relevant discussion points on how to revive this sector, how to attract more investments, create more jobs and focus on ease-of-doing business. With every new edition every year, we intend to make this platform as a single-point reference to all exciting and unique real estate projects and invite builders and real estate companies to utilise this platform to find more business development opportunities.

MoHUA Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra has been very supportive towards our initiative and I am glad that he instantly accepted our proposal to support this initiative. We look forward to have some important takeaways from the conferences planned during these seven days.

 Q: Going forward, do you foresee reinvention of the logistics sector with a spate of fresh investments? The Government has recently launched campaigns like ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Make in India’. These have given hope to the logistics sector. In your opinion, what more initiatives the Government should take to provide aid to the ailing logistics industries?

A: As India focuses on becoming atmanirbhar, we would see a revamp of domestic ecosystem and better alignment with the global supply chains – both of which will be significantly dependent on the robustness of logistics and warehousing. The industry would move from just a service provider to the position, which provides end to end solutions to their customers. Standardisation and design innovation based on India-centric needs together with streamlining of processes would reduce time and logistics costs. Use of automation and mechanisation of the sector is one of the key areas of Government to be covered under the National Logistics Policy. The Government should also speed up the implementation of unified integrated connectivity platform. With such progressive policy measures and abundant growth opportunities, logistics sector would see fresh investments.