Pranay Vakil FRICS
Executive Chairman, Knight Frank India
Can you describe your organisation and your role?
I am the Executive Chairman of Knight Frank in India (KF). The structure of the organisation includes, a Vice Chairman/Managing Director, who is in charge of day to day operations and five National Directors looking after our services lines.
What is your greatest achievement in your career?
Invited to be the Co-Chairman (Real Estate) of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the largest and oldest apex organization for Indian business. FICCI maintains the lead as the proactive business solution provider through research, interactions at the highest political level and global networking.
Being conferred “Fellowship” of RICS, an esteemed organisation. I consider this to be the pinnacle of my career in Real Estate.
What is your vision for the Indian property market?
To get the maturity in real estate market comparable to most developed countries
To make a difference to the Real Estate Industry, particularly in the area of “Affordable Housing”
To train young professionals to become property realtors.
What is your advice to young Indian professionals wishing to join the
property profession?
The property profession is not meant for everyone.
There are two kinds of property professionals:
The ‘outgoing’ ones are deal makers and are mainly on the transaction side.
The ‘inward looking’ ones are more research oriented and focus on advisory roles.
My advice to young professionals is that they carry out a SWOT analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, choose one of the two mainstreams and go for it. This profession is not only interesting but extremely rewarding. It can also be almost ‘intoxicating’. People who like properties, eat, drink and breathe properties!
What does RICS mean to you?
RICS means a lot since the standards of valuation in India need to be upgraded to confirm to international standards. Today the absence of RICS is badly felt in India by people who are used to high standards of service. Entry of RICS into India, will change the way we do property business in India.
