In the year 2012, got a call from Bhartiya city developers, to meet and present my ideas of master planning for their mixed development projects. My partner briefed me about the client and the project status since he was already working with them. It is a dream project for Bhartiya group as it is their first venture in the real estate industry. It was clearly told to me to restrict my presentation with ideas for one hour only.

I took a glance at existing project drawings, its conceptual master planning and the anticipated power demand as concluded by the project team. Since I had a first-hand experience lately in Manyata tech park, I had re-drawn my concept of master electrical scheme, identifying the source of power for the huge mixed development as planned, overlapping with multiple schemes for the project timeline and cost effectiveness.

It was told to me that project head along with few seniors would present in the meeting, thereafter, based on my presentation, they would evaluate in comparison with other consultants in Bangalore for the assignment.

My presentation started around 11am or so. A foreigner by name Antonio, who is part of the project lead team immediately started questioning for the line-by-line presentation! Initially I kept my calmness, tried to continue my presentation with suitable answers to his queries. The only person I knew in the forum was Mr. Swaroop, and he tried to stop Antenio from interruption but within no time I could understand the character of Antonio that he is a restless guy in nature, wanted to understand and debate on every point of his understandings!

To my surprise, a young man, looks to be in mid-thirties, entered the meeting room and sat in between the seniors to listen to the proceedings. The debate with foreigner went on for few more minutes, the young man, who entered late, made a straight instruction to the foreigner to stop interrupting, with a commanding voice. Anyone can easily guess, the man would be a decision maker, an owner of the project. He is Mr. Arjun Agarwal, as introduced to me by one of the team members. My in depth understanding of the project status and detailed preparation done back yard, helped me in presenting a slides which are much excited to any project owner. In between, he asked several questions (cautiously, foreigner did not show any interest in asking any more question to me!) and took my reply with calm mind and made some lighter comments as well in between.

The meeting, which was supposed to end in an hour, took more than two hours, it is because of enthuse shown by Mr. Arjun for a steady couple of hours. He did not express any remarks on my presentation but said “We shall revert”, at the end of session.

Just two days later, got a call from the company secretary for inviting me for the ground-breaking ceremony of their residential project. Remember, my presentation which was given few days earlier was on commercial projects/master planning and the invitation for residential project came as a surprise. The more beautiful surprise I could see in the ground-breaking ceremony our company name was displayed as a consultant for the residential project, which I was not even aware of it! I was overwhelmed by this gesture.

Few days later, started working on master planning along with commercial building design as well. Here, we were very much hunger and eager to make a point that WE, as a team are willingly dedicated for the Bhartiya city venture in the premises.

We made sure that no stone is unturned in our design be it at the district cooling, centralized generator bank, intermediate substations, tariff utilization, etc., It was a surprising figure for the entire project team when we said that we are limiting power demand for the project not more than 4VA per sq. ft. at any given time for life time!. As a team, we’re very much confident in achieving this as our previous case study in Mind space, Manyata tech park etc., which was with us as a ready reckoner.

We had committed to it and spared no energy in us in putting our whole-hearted efforts to the Bhartiya city project. Our designs were more towards energy conservation, efficient operation, ease of maintenance, built-in redundancies, expandability, futuristic and techno-driven goals.

As an owner, it is natural to be a dream project for Mr. Arjun but from consultants’ side, I take a pride to state that Bhartiya city is my dream project as well!

What inspires you and why?

Zeal for the dream for its realization, while encouraging others for their best efforts in getting a result, which has become a talk of the town today in Bangalore city.

What is your guilty pleasure?

I could not continue in further commercial projects for the un-known reason, but my emotional connect is still with the project either designed by us or not.

My takeaway?

A journey of a lifetime, with the people of passion, zeal to achieve something, can create their own brand.

Sincerely Ramesh G