According to housing minister Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s cities will need to develop 700-900 million square meters (sqmt) of built environment each year to fully realize their economic potential.

Stating that the construction industry should capitalise on this huge opportunity, the minister said that sustainability of these efforts should remain the focus area.

“It is important that the real-estate and construction industry capitalises on this huge opportunity. India’s urban rejuvenation is an important facet of the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to transform India into a developed nation by 2047, a key component of which is India’s advocacy for green and climate resilient infrastructure. It is imperative that these sustainability considerations are also imbibed by the construction industry,” Puri said.

“The built environment generates significant carbon emissions accounting for almost 39% of gross carbon emissions worldwide. It is necessary that urban India adopts resilient construction technologies to achieve the target of zero emissions by 2070,” the minister said in his virtual address for the Propagate 2022 summit.

The Propagate 2022 summit is Asia’s first proptech accelerator programme. The day-long summit was held in Bangalore.  During the summit, sessions on smart design & planning, smart construction, smart finance & investments, making of proptech unicorns and challenges for proptech adoption were hosted.

“With sustainability being a key focus area today, it is important for the construction sector to focus on technologies that will help reduce the environmental impact caused by increased construction needed for economic growth. It is also vital that developers align with academia to create awareness and build a sustainable ecosystem,” said Karnataka IT minister CN Ashwath Narayan.

“The real estate and construction industry have been late adopters of technology. However, this is changing with unprecedented interest from developers, investors and especially start-ups. In 2016, the real estate industry invested less than 0.5% of revenue in technology. Today, that number has more than doubled… but, a lot more needs to be done. It is imperative that the sector accelerates the adoption of technology, and this is possible only if we pool in our intellect, intent and resources behind innovative technology that improves productivity, efficiency and protects the environment,” said Brigade Enterprises chairman MR Jaishankar.

Source: housing