PRE Students Travel, Work in India During Holidays
Padmanaban and Yook get firsthand experience with India's emerging markets
Ravi Padmanaban (MPS/RE '09) and June Yook (MPS/RE '08) in India during their winter study tour
Two Program in Real Estate students, Ravi Padmanaban ’09 and June Yook ‘08, traveled to India through a study-abroad program sponsored by the Johnson School of Management over the university’s winter break. The program, part of a course taught by Dr. Melvin Goldman, Professor of Entrepreneurship, included a total of eight students with interests in disciplines as varied as real estate development, marketing, investment banking and operations.
The program featured an internship with a company in each student’s industry of choice. Each student from Cornell partnered with another student from the Somaiya Institute of Management and Research (SIMSR), located in Amhedabad, India. The faculty coordinators matched each student with a company on the basis of their previous experience level and interest in the industry. The internships culminated with students making final presentations to the senior management of the company and faculty program heads of Cornell and SIMSR.
In addition, students visited companies in various industries in order to gain insight on the exponential growth of the Indian economy over the last few years. For example, the students visited Tata Motors the day before they released the world’s most inexpensive car, the Nano. The company visits took place in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore.
Padmanaban worked for Silverglades LLC, a real estate developer based in Delhi. Silverglades specializes in golf-course communities and high-rise condominiums. Recently, the company has also delved into service apartment and office building development, and is targeting emerging segments within the Indian market. To aid this effort, Padmanaban produced a market study of Gurgaon, a flourishing suburb of Delhi that has experienced rapid growth as a result of infrastructure improvement and the many multinational companies moving into the area. Homing in on the target market of young single professionals, he administered a survey to potential homebuyers, ultimately leading to conclusions about consumer psychographics, priorities in selecting housing, and housing and community layout preferences. “I gained an understanding of how the growth of the Indian real estate market is primarily dependent on infrastructure improvements and of how the Indian home buyer preferences have evolved over time,” said Padmanaban of his work in Gurgaon.
Yook worked for Hirco PLC, a real estate developer and construction company based in Mumbai. Hirco, which is one of India’s largest developers, builds entire townships from the ground up. Their past projects include Powai and Thane, both suburbs of Mumbai, and the company has expanded into international real estate projects through development of a 90-story tower in Dubai. Recently, Hirco purchased 500 acres in Chennai to develop a township in an emerging part of the city. Yook, who holds a bachelors degree in architecture from Berkeley, was primarily responsible for making site and unit layout recommendations for a mixed-use project in the Chennai township. In addition, June provided LEED advisory services for the project. Speaking of her experience abroad, Yook said, “I was able to understand how real estate transactions in India differ vastly from those in the United States. I also gained an appreciation of the immense scope and complexity of large-scale developers’ projects in India.”