Dubai

Some of the biggest names in India’s rarefied haute couture space are all set to pit their creative energies on a luxury real estate project. The rollcall of celebrity designers who have signed up for the 24-storey Cattaro project include Tarun Tahliani, JJ Valaya, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, along with Shantanu and Nikhil.

It is not that the intricacies of designing the look and feel of real estate is a completely new experience for these names. “They have been associated with assignments for private clients who wanted to get their homes done up, but it’s the first time all these names are coming together for a bigger commercial canvas,” said Sanjay Sachdeva, Executive Director at Advance India Projects Ltd (AIPL), the developer which is helming the Rs3.5 billion project, which will be formally launched in Dubai on Thursday. Around half of the units are being set aside for non-resident Indians.

“It’s a bit like getting the three Khans of India’s film industry [Shahrukh, Salmnan and Aamir] working in a film and then getting them to market it together. Suffice to say, there was a lot of effort to get all the designers keen on the project.”

The developer also tapped into its own creativity to put the best use of its designer resources. Each designer was assigned a certain block of floors, thus ensuring the canvas was big enough to put out their optimum best. “Their inputs will be utilised right from the use of materials to the hard finishes and one the structure is done into each of the residences, of which there will be 84 in all,” said Sachdeva.

The entry level pricing is around $650,000 (Dh2.38 million) and go up to $800,000. “The choice of Gurgaon as opposed to a Nariman Point or Peddar Road (in Mumbai) and Aurangazeb Road (in Delhi) as the location made sure we could create a project where the pricing could be set at this level,” said Sachdeva. “A more expensive location would have meant we could never have set this price levels.

“Also, the luxury residential market in India is passing through a slow phase and we wanted to make sure that the wider market dynamic did not in any way impact our project’s sales prospects. To this end, our location and pricing are critical.”

The project is looking at a construction cycle of three-and-a-half years, and it is a schedule that the developer is quite sure of meeting.