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Eastern Business District

A Defunct Mall Transformed Into a Auccessful Office Retail Complex

Problem Statement

Right on LBS Road, in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai – Bhandup was once a successful mall. It faced a complete shutdown with the concept of all retail under one roof collapsing. The problem statement was to convert this defunct mall into a high-performing asset.

The Insight

With this project, the customer definition gained more weight as we converted retailers into our customers. It is because the customer definition here goes hand-in-hand with the Product Concept development. A major part of the building was transformed into office spaces to create an Office-Retail Complex – a trendy concept in the international market. With this concept, the opportunity opened for many retail investors who would have never looked for investing in commercial assets and always found residential as the only investment avenue in Real Estate. So, who is the customer? Every retail investor.

The Solution

Here, the concept was developed based on two perspectives– product and ROI (investments)

1. Product – Office Retail Complex:

Offices – with a mix of small, medium, and large-sized offices across three floors of the four-floor building, we were able to open the world of upgraded workspaces for MSMEs and growing businesses.

Retail:
the ground floor was conceptualized so that spaces and avenues were dedicated to food, fashion, electronics, and other categories. With major brands like McDonald’s, Cinemax, Metro CnC, HDFC Ergo, NEXA, and more – the space had a solid head start and was all set to attract more.

Amenities and Lifestyle:
the concept went beyond modern offices and retail and emerged as a lifestyle destination. Therefore, we also added sports and leisure avenues to bring life to the workplace.
2. ROI – Investment:

The better half of Real Estate is an investment avenue that provides for 3X rental yield against residential investment. With the awareness of 8% rental yields against 2.5% rental yields in residential investments, tables were turned, and investors lined up!

An eternal cashflow avenue at effective ZERO investment – with monthly rental yields matching the possible EMIs, what customers had was an effective Zero Ownership Cost asset. The rising rental income year-on-year was a bonus of this deal.

Easy-to-own-asset –With the right sized office spaces focused on small offices, things changed, and it became easier to buy an office or a retail space instead of a home in Mumbai.

The Approach

The transformation story and Brand creation:
  • Pre-launch #1: Codename Smash-Hit
    Focused only on small offices, in summer 2016, Eastern Suburbs was bombarded with the revolutionary concept of Office Retail Complex. Here, small offices were opening for the first time for investment. With product and investment attributes mentioned above, a large set of retail investors made this an incredible opportunity resulting in order bookings of 201 offices!
  • Pre-launch #2: Codename Mega-Hit In the early winters of 2016, the retail-only pre-launch saw an innovative way of door-to-door selling and investments. The opportunity promised high returns in the form of high rentals of Retail Spaces. Customer-focused brands such as Mcdonald’s and many more assured the quality of the opportunity for customers.
  • Pre-launch #3: Codename Hat-trick Before the launch, we revealed a complete new and most luxurious floor (saved for the last) in the form of Exquis – the Director’s floor. With an elevated office floor, accentuated product features, and a transformation story becoming real – Codename Hat-Trick saw incredible success and a road set for the brand launch.
  • Launch: Eastern Business District
    Mumbai East – We combined the unique business district and the new office-retail complex as one Eastern Business District. With the transformation happening steadily, a new look of the building came up and Sonakshi Sinha coming for the launch event – this was the launch deemed for success – and so it happened
  • Last activation: EBD Transform A fully equipped and ready building was now home to many offices and retail brands and was truly alive! With the last activation – and a big successful one – EBD became synonyms to transformation and success.

The Xanadu Impact

The cumulative efforts outlined above resulted in a complete sell-out of all the units available (ground floor and 3 floors of office space). This project is one of the city’s most impactful commercial real estate launches so far.

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