Now Schools Offer Residential Projects !! Who will be next ?!

After mega residential projects adding prestigious schools as features to entice buyers, like L&T's Eden Park getting the 3rd PSBB school (after KK Nagar & Nungambakkam), DLF's Garden City getting a PSBB Millennium school and L&T Arun Excello's Estancia getting Vidya Mandir (Mylapore), now it is the turn of schools to offer attached residences.

Starting the trend in Chennai is Vael's Billabong High. The school is reported to have sent circulars enquiring if parents would like to buy villas to be built on/adjacent to its campus. The news report by TOI reveals that Vael's Billabong High plans to build around 100 villas in the proposed project. Vael's Billabong High has 2 campuses one at Neelankarai and another at Pon Vidhyashram Gardens at Injambakkam. (My guess is that..) The project should likely come up in Injambakkam, which seems to have a lot more adjacent space, to accommodate 100 villas.

Vael's Billabong High is part of the Vel's group of institutions.

The article also reports of similar plans by Dharmapuri based Vijay Vidyashram and Coimbatore based Monarch International School.

Who will be next ?!

And, who do you think will get into the real estate business next ?

Businesses with large land banks may well take the plunge. With Sathyam (and Matyas) out of the way, top on my list of probables is Infosys.

With Infosys declaring officially that it's IT services business is slowing down, and with a huge land bank (prompting people to question why it requires 2000 acres in Karnataka, when Wipro requires just 50 acres), and with its experience of building Infosys Residence (serviced apartments for its employees) and having been fined for wanting to treat them as residences instead of commercial entities, it may well want to build and sell them off as residences to its long serving employees. 

These residential projects will again add schools and other features such that the employee will not have the excuse about traffic jams or dropping/picking up their children at school. With the campus becoming a township, spouses have a better probability to get a job within the campus.

Also, late night travel (more so for BPO employees) and related risks can also be avoided. 

So, very soon offer letters will include an offer to buy (or lease from a transfered employee) an apartment/villa, capturing them within the company campus - and no, that is not what is usually called a "captive development center".