Wellness homes encourage you to live a healthier lifestyle in all aspects of living, says Yukti Nagpal, Director, Gulshan Homz, in an interview to Realty & More Editor Palash Roy. An MS in marketing from San Francisco, Yukti is highly passionate about Gulshan’s latest project Dynasty which, she says, “is the first project that has me written all over it.” Every feature of Dynasty, which she would like to dub as “the luxury of wellness”, is very thoughtfully placed and very research-oriented.
Herewith we reproduce the edited version of R&M interview with the young and dynamic Director of Gulshan Homz:
Palash Roy: What exactly are wellness homes? Everybody is claiming to have come up with wellness homes. How do we define wellness homes?
Yukti Nagpal: Wellness home is a term that I recently started using a lot amidst the pandemic and according to me, a wellness home is a home that is specially designed to inculcate the habits of a healthy lifestyle into your day-to-day life. From the second you enter the complex to the second you leave out, every second that you spend in the complex reminds you of, or rather encourages you, to live a healthier lifestyle. Let’s say, for example, when you get in the level of oxygen that you breathe, the kind of trees that you see, the kind of fruits that are growing, it gives you an instant gratification of Nature.
When you get into your apartment, you have air-purifier units. Air conditions there are air-purified. There’re many things, you know. Like your apartment is a zero-waste. You enter into a club you are served detox water. You have all these. You go to the terrace, you have these sunbathing decks. You have yoga meditation centres throughout the garden. So, all of these things encourage you to think about your health on a daily basis. If the food that you eat, the water that you drink, the air that you breathe, it’s all top-notch.
In Dynasty, we have an offering where we did about 50 different kind of trees out of which some, most of them, are medicated plants. Some of them are high oxygen giving plants, some of them are mosquito repellent and some have so many other medicinal values that you have never even heard of. So, this is in my definition of what a wellness home is.
PR: With the current pandemic, many are offering and claiming to give wellness homes. So from a buyer’s prospective, how does one figure out that this is a wellness home or this is only a marketing gimmick? How do we differentiate?
YN: You know, it is the same thing when people talk about luxury. Everybody wants to speak about their project as luxury project. Now everybody is talking about wellness. So, I believe, it is just a common trend, not in just real estate but any industry you pick up. One person starts and the trend follows
To differentiate between a marketing gimmick product versus a really wellness-centric product, you have to get into the depth of the kind of technicality the developer is offering For example, some people could just put one air purification unit and call it a wellness home whereas wellness home is a holistic approach, holistic development of each and every element that is significant to make your life healthier, that is adding or contributing to make your life healthier. Just one feature cannot be called a wellness home; it has to be a bunch of them. It has to be from the start of your day to the end of the day. That is how you differentiate between them.
Nowadays many people are talking about hydroponics; many people are talking about fresh farm. If you ask me, nine out of ten people have no idea what hydroponic is. They are just reading things and talking about it. Hydroponics is such a beautiful invention that is made by our fellow farmer brothers to bridge the gap between the farmers and the customers that you can grow your produce within your kitchen with false lighting and irrigation piping. Now, people don’t even know what hydroponics is. Anybody who is having a small terrace garden is calling it hydroponically-grown or produced.
So, yeah, I would say that customers have to be smart about it. You have to go into the depth, you have to research weather whatever the features the developer is talking about, do they really fit into this building or not?
Another very important part I would like to highlight is that the certification of a building is done by IGBC. So you have to check on their website how do they classify a home, gold-rated or platinum- rated or any other rated. If they say it, you should believe it, not just what a developer says.
PR: Gulshan Dynasty is your latest offering. What do you call it, luxury offering or a wellness offering?
YN: I would say it offers the luxury of wellness
PR: Tell us more about the product
YN: OK, so to start with, Gulshan Dynasty is the first project that I have conceived, along with my bosses, of course. Before that, I was always in the sideline. This is the first project that has me written all over it. It is also a very well-researched project for which I have been personally researching for the last two and a half years before we put it on paper. So every feature that you see in Gulshan Dynasty or have heard of is very thoughtfully placed, very research-oriented. I would say everything is thought before putting it and somehow we have been lucky that all the offerings that we thought of putting in here have perfectly, beautifully, fitted into the pandemic situation.
Gulshan Dynasty is a product which is made keeping in mind the people like me, the millennial of today who is very well exposed, has travelled the entire world and wants something more than just four walls of concrete. Gulshan Dynasty is a product created, or rather planned, to cater to this very well-off, very well-exposed and explored generation who are looking for convenience; all in all a self- sustainable living in general. So that’s what Gulshan Dynasty is. Actually, it’s all about features that attract people like me who has always lived in the lap of luxury all my life.
PR: Tell us more about Gulshan Dynasty.
YN: It is very well-researched, thought-of project where we did a lot of primary and secondary research amongst people like me, basically throughout the country: what they want to watch, what they want to see in a luxury housing and all those trends were very well analysed, all those new ideas very well incorporated and there we have it.
PR: Tell me one thing. All these things come at a premium. Now with the economic condition, you know, with the pandemic people’s income is going down. There are job-cuts and things like that. Do you think the market has an appetite for such kind of a product?
YN: Absolutely! In fact, now even more than ever because, like I said before we started this interview, I was talking to you about how paranoid I am about my health, about this virus, about things that could go wrong because of this pandemic. So, people value their own life, their own house and their own family a lot more than they ever did. So for a person, who has Rs 100 and used to spend Rs 60 on useless things, will probably not spend 60 anymore but will be more than willing to spend that Rs 60 in a place where he knows his investment is secured And it will be secure in a way that after two years even his family will be more secured. So, that’s the kind of mind-set that the value of life has drastically increased amidst this pandemic
So yes, the market has appetite for a product like this rather I don’t think we could have launched this product at a better time when everybody is concerned about their health and their well-being and how their next home should be. Rather this is a luxury I’m talking about where the customers are the HNIs. I have seen the demand growing super high even for my two-bedroom apartments which are slightly better than affordable but at the same time they are not the most premium products in the world. Even the demand there has increased because a person who was staying on rent amidst this five-month lockdown is in pain. The need for having your own home, rather your own home that satisfies all your needs, is even more than ever amidst this pandemic. That’s for sure.
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