Redefining Affordable Housing

- Joseph Rozario

IN WHAT BEGAN WITH A SINGLE HOUSING project, the Siddha Group has traversed a long way to establish itself as a leading player in the real estate sector. At the helm of affairs is chairman Chandra Prakash Jain, the man who started it all for the Siddha Group, and his brother, Sanjay Jain, who has been a key force behind its immense growth as its managing director.

Though first-generation realtors, the duo has much to show by way of achievement. The Siddha Group has a presence in Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai and Bengaluru today and has posted a whopping ₹600 crore turnover in 2017—a far cry from the humbler days of their forbears who had migrated from Banura in the Sikar district of Rajasthan to a village called Palashbari near Guwahati in Assam two generations ago. Chandra Prakash and Sanjay Jain’s father, late Amarchand Jain, in fact was born there. After coming of age, he tried his hand at several small scale businesses before venturing into the jute business, which brought him to Kolkata in the 1950s. From trading in jute he went on to own jute mills, and thus jute became the Jains family business.

Foray into real estate 

Despite the jute business going strong, brothers Chandra Prakash and Sanjay, however, had to look for other avenues for growth. This was because they had two other brothers, and at one point when all four of them joined the family jute business, it resulted in the business having more hands to run it than required. With that Chandra Prakash Jain’s foray into the real estate sector began, and Sanjay Jain soon followed suit. “My brother, Chandra Prakash Jain, who had completed his graduation in Kolkata, shifted from Kolkata to Jaipur in early 1986. In 1987, he built the Siddha House in Jaipur. The successful construction of this building motivated us to get into the real estate business. I joined the business much later, in 1992,” says Sanjay Jain.