Century Real Estate promoters enter financial services space, launch NBFC

The Pai family, the promoters of Century Real Estate, one of the oldest real estate firms in Bengaluru, is foraying into financial services space with the launch of a non-banking financial company (NBFC). 

After receiving licence for setting up an NBFC last year, the firm has started small-ticket loans to realtors in the initial phase.

"After getting licence, we are doing some amount of real estate lending now. Ticket sizes are very small now and we are disbursing loans in the range of Rs 50-100 million per deal to realtors," said P Ravindra Pai, managing director (MD) of Century Real Estate, adding, "It is our proprietary money as we have not raised any funds from other sources. Currently, the book stands at around Rs 1.2 billion." 

Founded in 1973 by P Dayananda Pai and P Satish Pai, Century Real Estate is one of the oldest real estate firms in the southern city of Bengaluru. The firm, with a land bank of around 3,000 acres, owns one of the prime land parcels in the city. With the second-generation coming on board, the firm is slowly diversifying into other segments relating to real estate business as part of its initiatives to find varied revenue sources. 

Among industry peers, Piramal Group also has presence in both realty and financial services space through its financial services wing, Piramal Capital & Housing Finance. 

"We don't have any plans for scaling up as of now. We started in a small way as we understood the underlying risk in real estate," said P Ravindra Pai, who took over as MD of the realty firm in 2003.

Apart from entering into the financial services space, Century Real Estate is also looking at increasing its presence in the office leasing segment by launching new projects. The real estate firm is planning to come up with 2 million square feet of commercial real estate in the coming quarters.

"We want to be among the top three real estate players in southern India in the coming years. As we have prime land parcels in the city, we can build up a good portfolio of office space," Pai added.

Century Real Estate is also planning to launch a residential project of 1 million sq ft along with a plotted development over 60 acres in the next six to nine months.