The Athashri retirement community in Pune, managed by Paranjape Schemes, offers Western-style amenities such as a clubhouse, library, gym, pool, etc but with a distinctly Indian twist - like a Ganesh temple on site. The project includes 180 units in total. Tata Housing Development has launched its first senior housing project in May in Bangalore and is planning to launch four more projects of this type.
Since a major group of senior citizens are independent, educated, financially stable and socially connected, they possess a clear plan of how to spend their time and money after retirement, elderly housing projects serve as a good investment destination.
For now, only few real estate companies have been focusing towards senior housing projects in India including Paranjape Schemes, Max India, backed by Tata Housing Development, Goldman Sachs Group, Ashiana Housing and The Covai Group.
With the intense modernization in practice, joint families are becoming rare to find. Factors such as rising incomes of people, changing lifestyles, rise of nuclear families owing to relocation of people to different cities (for studies, job purpose), etc are driving the demand for retirement housing projects in India. These have led to a boost in demand for senior housing projects.
In earlier stage, it was difficult for our developers to find buyers for retirement housing projects in India. But slowly and steadily the projects have been seeing good demand. Many developers are showing interest.
JLL has said that, currently there is an annual demand of 312,000 senior homes across 135 Indian cities, but only 10,000 to 15,000 new supply is present in the pipeline. So many more projects have to come in future to cater to this segment.