BEYOND BENGALURU

AFTER FOUR DECADES OF OPERATIONS IN BENGALURU, REAL ESTATE MAJOR BRIGADE GROUP IS EXPANDING BEYOND KARNATAKA. BUT IT FACES STIFF REGIONAL COMPETITION AMID BROADER SECTORAL HEADWINDS. WILL ITS STRATEGY DELIVER?

- ARNAB DUTTA

WHEN PAVITRA SHANKAR took charge as Managing Director of Brigade Enterprises in 2022, the real estate company was confined mainly to Bengaluru, the information technology capital of India where her father M.R. Jaishankar had built it into a household name in its nearly 40 years of existence.

Pavitra Shankar, who has an MBA in real estate and finance from Columbia University, and her younger sister Nirupa Shankar, who studied management in hospitality at Cornell University, were tasked with powering Brigade Enterprises’s next phase of growth. Nirupa was named joint MD the same year her sister became MD.

The sisters ascended to the top management at a particularly sensitive time. Real estate was picking up the pieces after the Covid-19 pandemic, which had scarred the industry like many others. When the worst of Covid eventually blew over, property companies struggled with a shortage of construction workers who had deserted urban areas and towns and fled to the hinterland.

Against that backdrop, by all accounts, Brigade hasn’t done too badly under Pavitra and Nirupa Shankar. Take Brigade’s performance over the last three years. From ₹2,999 crore in FY22, net sales grew 70% to ₹5,074 crore in FY25. Overall sales value of its real estate projects grew 160% to ₹7,800 crore from about ₹3,000 crore. The company’s Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margin, an indicator of operating profitability, improved by 12 percentage points, rising from 13% to 25% in the period.

And from a net loss of ₹65 crore in FY22, Brigade swung to a net profit of ₹686 crore last year.