by B.C. Thimmaiah
Sankalp Group has been building apartments in Mysuru for 20 years now and is known to be the only local builder who has managed to complete big projects. The group that started with 40 apartments near Highway Circle today has grown to building projects like their ambitious Sankalp Central Park at Yadavagiri where already 250 families stay in a community that is set to grow to 1000!
As the Sankalp Group completes its 20 years in construction, Star of Mysore spoke to the Group’s Founder and Chairman Dr. V.K. Jagadish Babu and his son Nikhil Jagadish, who with an engineering degree from Columbia University, USA, has now joined his father as Director, about their journey and future plans.
Jagadish Babu, who started off as a structural and design consultant in Bengaluru, speaking of him taking the plunge into construction industry says: “During my Master’s degree, I was working as a part-time architect for a Bengaluru-based firm and I was selected for a government job as a PWD Assistant Engineer in Gulbarga. I went there and assumed charge and spending just a day at the Gulbarga office made me think about my future and I came back to Bengaluru to complete my studies. Then I set up a small design office in Bengaluru and soon enough the entrepreneurial bug bite me and I became a property developer.”
Speaking of why he chose Mysuru instead of staying in Bengaluru where he had opened his first office, Jagadish says: “I chose Mysuru as I did my schooling in Demonstration School (DMS) and my family was closely associated with Ramakrishna Ashram here.” Jagadish Babu’s first project in Mysuru was a wing of Bharat Cancer Hospital in 1995 after which he established Sankalp. “Sankalp means determination in Kannada, and in 1996 I did not have the money but I had “Sankalp” so I named my company with the one thing I had,” he says and adds: “At that time, the concept of apartments was new to Mysuru and it was a one-man show — I was the builder and the marketing manager. Fortunately, my first apartment on the New Sayyaji Rao Road clicked and the rest is history.”
Jagadish says the secret to his success is he sees himself as custodian of people’s hard-earned money as many of them are first-time home owners and also he has never compromised on quality while making sure the properties have clear titles. This is the reason he says he has over 3,500 customers and quite a few of them have turned into repeat customers.
Mentioning about the group’s flagship Sankalp Central Park at Yadavagiri, the land which once housed Ideal Jawa (India) Ltd., that manufactured the most sought-after two-wheelers in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Jagadish Babu said that today, Sankalp Group has converted the 18-acre “Old Jawa Factory” (as called by many in Mysore) into a beautiful and sprawling neighbourhood with 500 completed apartments, 250 already occupied and another 412 planned in the next phase.
“For the first time in Mysuru, we brought architects from Singapore for designing. While the first phase of the project has been completed, the second phase is nearing completion. A unique feature about this international lifestyle project is that only 22 percent of the total land is built area and the rest 78 percent is dedicated to landscaping and open space,” he says.
Jagadish Babu’s son Nikhil Jagadish, who joined as the Director of Sankalp Group early this year, also added saying that now the Group plans to move beyond just apartment construction and will soon be setting up educational institutions. One specifically would be a Sankalp Finishing School where architects will be trained practically on live projects. The other important project he says is an efficient senior citizen’s home where the old can live with dignity, joy and confidence, a place they will be truly cared for.
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / October 22nd, 2016