Brigade Value Homes a marketing innovation

Since Brigade has launched their new Brigade Value Homes in Bangalore it has generated a bit of a negative feedback withe people accusing it of usurping investors money to tide over the financial crisis. This one way of seeing it.

The way I see it it is an innovation in the Indian market place. Traditionally in India a builder launches projects based on a survey about demand and then the houses get booked by retail buyers. Anyone who has done such surveys knows that they typically fail to give a clear answer as not everyone is a serious responder and hence focus groups are supposed to be a better metric. Again focus groups only target a sub segment and for large projects they fail to deliver the goods.

This is were brigades innovation gas come in. They are getting the most accurate buyer survey with hardly any cost by asking customers to put their money where their mouth is. Based on the booking they can go to the drawing board and design houses which have over 75% bookings from day one. And its not completely one sided, a buyer still gets a good rate of return on the initial booking amount due to the low cancellation fee of Rs1000, probably a better choice of apartment and probably a construction which won't get much delayed as the builder can concentrate on building and moving on rather than finding buyers for the vacant flats.