Jamshedpur gave birth to Telco (now Tata Motors) which has just launchedthe low-cost Nano; Jamshedpur, according to the 35-year old Tata HousingDevelopment Company managing director Brotin Banerjee, is what inspired TataHousing to launch its Shubh Griha low-cost housing project in Mumbai.

Banerjee has been with Tata Housing forthe last two years. For now, the group will construct 1,000 low-cost houses inMumbai, and later do another 4,000 over four years in different cities.
Banerjee, who was born and brought up in Jharkhand and has worked with theTatas since 1998, says he liked the concept of Jamshedpur, which providedhousing to thousands of employees working with Tata companies and others. So,he says, he wanted to try and replicate that model in other cities. 'TheTatas', he says, 'have always worked with the common man in mind. I am just oneof them".

According to Banerjee, the project was a long time in the making and the teamworked with suppliers, designers and others for over a year to come up with amodel which was financially viable -- much the same thing, it appears inretrospect, that happened when Tata Motors conceived the Nano.

"We had many board and committee meetings discussing financial andcommercial parameters at length. We were able to demonstrate that the projectwas feasible", he says.

Will the company's experiment to reach to the bottom of the pyramid be financiallyviable when the economy is slowing down, and how will the entry of builderssuch as Unitech and Omaxe in this very segment affect the Tata project?

"Why not?" counters Banerjee. "There is a shortage of 24 millionhouses in the country in mid- and lower-income segments, and that cannot bebridged by the government unless there is private sector participation",he argues.

The similarities with the Nano, of course, don't end here. The Shubh Grihaproject, like the Nano, is likely to add more to the buzz around the companythan it will to its bottomline. In the next four years, if all goes well, itwill contribute just around 5 per cent to Tata Housing's revenues.

For the rest, the company is banking on mid-income and premium housingprojects, IT parks, malls, office complexes and so on. In the same manner thatTata Motors is counting on the truck market to lift its fortunes.