Customizing and constructing your house on a plot is a much complex task than choosing an apartment where you will live for your entire life. But with companies like 100 Pillars, it doesn’t sound like a difficult task at all.
Today we have Mr Srinivas Jayaram and Kishan Raj BR who share their story about 100 Pillars and how they reached the pinnacle of their success.
Srinivas Jayaram, an alumnus of MS Ramaiah, has a decade of work experience, having worked at companies like CommonFloor, The Hindu Real Estate, and Langoor Digital. His experience is mainly in the fields of real estate, construction, management, strategic planning, sales and marketing, and technology.
Kishan Raj BR, prior to starting 100Pillars, had started up a couple of more companies which helped him learn from the small and big successes and failures, and build a strong experience in execution, business development, and finance & strategy.
- Tell us more about your company 100Pillars?
100Pillars Constructions was founded to help people build spaces to live, work and make memories in. 100Pillars offers services tailored to every minute aspect of a construction project. Formerly known for the commercial project as Rathnam Contractors, which was founded in 1977 by Late BJ Rathnam, 100Pillars strive to make your dream house a reality.
We at 100Pillars are a team of engineers who firmly believe in building relationships, trust, enduring structures, and remarkable homes for the future generation. As a team, we have more than 70+ years of experience in the construction industry.
We know your home is your biggest asset that is why we are here to bring your dreams and unique lifestyle into reality. In short, we help our customers to build a customized home or a villa in their plot. Right from inception to handover of residential spaces in India.
- What were the most difficult challenges you faced while starting your business?
Construction is a long and hefty process. Challenges are bound to happen, given there are so many people involved.
One of the major challenges we faced as a construction company face is labour management. Unlike any other field, manpower is quite unsteady in the construction field. We often see labourers not turning up to the site along with taking long vacations in the middle of the process.
To prevent this from happening, with one of our projects we work with at least 20 to 30 teams of masons and keep shuffling them from one project to another.
What makes construction such a competitive sector for business are the changing rates in the market. The local contractors keep changing their working rate and play with the quality of materials they use, making fake promises for their profit, disregarding the client.
To resolve this, we keep experimenting with the pricing of our construction packages. One of the major things that differs us from other construction firms is our exceptionally detailed quality specifications for the prices of each package that we offer.
- How do you manage to stand better and be unique in terms of competition?
As a team, we focus on quality, collaboration, and value. All our projects are tightly controlled and well managed to provide clients with the lowest overall project cost. We take it into great account to work closely and intricately with clients, architects, and subcontractors to complete projects on time, under budget, and to the client’s utmost satisfaction.
The first and most basic thing that we did was the classification of potential clients based on approximate budget rates into three segments of Low, Medium, and High classes. This made it very easy for us to bisect their needs according to the competitive pricing of various services and materials in the industry based on which, we have three simple package models called Basic, Standard & Premium.
We were very careful in making our website as user-friendly and easy as we could. We made sure that all the information was clean and clear so that our customers know exactly what they get and expect from us before getting into the agreement with us.
- The interiors and exteriors of houses are ever-changing, how do you keep up with the latest and trending designs of the houses?
Definitely, the interiors and exteriors of houses are ever-changing, being updated is a vital thing for our business to sustain. To tackle that our team of architects/engineers are keenly focusing on discovering new products/methods in the market.
Like we said everyone has a dream of his/her home to be unique. We understand the taste of our customers, learn and propose a personalized floor plans & elevations for each of the houses we build.
- What sorts of home designs are trending nowadays?
Apparently, people are looking for minimalists with a blend of modern designs for their homes. We help our customers pick designs that are easy to maintain for their lifetime.
- After all this success, what do you struggle with now?
As of now, we are not facing any kind of a struggle but there are small concerns like neighbouring plot owners who merely make adjustments during construction stages. To an extent, there will be some sort of dust or noise pollution involved but we make sure to take all the precautionary measurements like covering the boundaries of the plot.
- Tell us about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career.
Our customer base is growing at 70% month on month with an average ticket size of Rs 41 Lakhs. Recently we have started our operations in 2 & 3 tier cities like Mysuru and Tumkur. Our Constant communication with clients & material suppliers kept them in the know of how things are done here. Regular feedback collection and constant improvements to our business, based on the feedback are the steps we initially took. We continue doing that to retain customers’ referrals and ensure 100% customer satisfaction.
- If you had one piece of advice to someone who is just starting his or her business, what would it be?
I recognize that each industry is ridden with numerous gaps owing to a lack of fair pricing, technology, inadequate management system, delays, and quality assurance. Be sure to provide the best experience possible for your customer which in turn will grow referrals.
