Under RERA a homebuyer's money belongs to the building it paid for, so I run a developer's finances project by project before I add them up.
I am the chief financial officer of Mridvika Habitats Limited, a fictional residential developer headquartered in Pune and listed on the NSE and BSE. In the year to March 2026 we sold homes worth ₹4,120 crore, collected ₹3,480 crore from buyers and recognised ₹2,960 crore of revenue on the homes we handed over. Those three numbers measure different things, and much of my work consists of keeping them apart. We have 34 projects under construction in Pune, Thane, Panvel and North Bengaluru, each registered under RERA and each with its own designated bank account.
I came to this chair from the other side of the table. I audited Pune builders in the late 1990s, rated developers and road companies for a credit rating agency, appraised toll roads and ports for a private bank and spent five years building a developer-lending book at a listed NBFC. When the funding squeeze of 2018 and 2019 stopped that book from growing, I wanted to work where the risks I had been pricing were actually created. Mridvika's founding family asked me to join as CFO in November 2019, four months before the pandemic closed every site we had.
The lesson I brought with me is that a residential developer is a set of separate trusts dressed as one company. Money a buyer pays for a flat in Wakad cannot honestly fund a land payment in Bengaluru, whatever the consolidated balance sheet says. Putting that principle into our withdrawals, our borrowing and our dealings with the promoter family has cost us a land parcel, a launch season and some goodwill. It has also helped take net debt from ₹1,920 crore to ₹540 crore and our credit rating from BBB+ to A.
Withdrawals the escrow could defend
In 2020–21 we drew ₹310 crore less from project designated accounts than our certificates allowed, after spreading land cost across every phase of each layout. Every project kept funding its own construction through the lockdowns, and we declined a ₹260 crore land parcel in Baner to stay that way.
Expensive money repaid early
We prepaid ₹1,150 crore of NBFC construction loans at about 13.8 per cent, replacing them with bank construction finance and a ₹750 crore placement with institutions. Average borrowing cost fell from 12.6 to 9.4 per cent, and two agencies raised our rating from BBB+ to A.
A promoter's land priced on independent evidence
A joint development proposal for 18 acres owned by a Kirtane family LLP went to shareholders at a 35 per cent revenue share instead of the 45 per cent area share first proposed. Related parties could not vote in favour, and the resolution passed with 91 per cent of the votes cast.
Delayed buyers offered their money back
When a Thane phase fell about eighteen months behind its registered possession date, we wrote to all 640 buyers offering a refund with interest or monthly delay interest. 214 chose refunds totalling ₹223 crore; nine complaints reached MahaRERA, and all were settled.
Current focus
I am preparing the board's decision on how much land to buy outright, rather than through joint development, in North Bengaluru over the next three years, a choice worth roughly ₹900 crore of capital. Alongside it, I am moving our customer-collections team onto the same project ledgers that our lenders and auditors read, so that a late instalment shows up as a construction risk in the week it happens.
Conversations I welcome
I am not looking to leave Mridvika. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed company outside real estate and construction, joining the Audit Committee and, after a year, chairing it or the Risk Management Committee if the board wished. I can give about twenty-eight days a year, subject to my board's consent and a conflicts review, and I accept a few invitations to speak to lenders, auditors and directors.
