Mr. G R K Reddy

Finding His Own Way

The Founder – MD of MARG has built his road to success painstakingly, but not without hurdles.

- says Lalitha Sridhar

His faith in himself, in a certain centeredness and balance, keeps G. Rama Krishna Reddy’s soft-spoken and self-effacing charm unruffled in the face of one of the worst downturns to hit the realty sector. “Recession is a re-alignment to requirements,” he says. “Too much trading has happened in naturally occurring resources like land and oil, or even intellect. In these past (boom) years, while extraction was cheap, trading was at very high prices. But the value created (from these naturally occurring resources) has been invested in only, say, 30 locations — whether Chicago or Shanghai or Gurgaon; it has not been in universally available affordable housing, education or healthcare. This is exclusive, not inclusive, development.”
“While this process itself has value, it gets degraded in the long run,” Reddy explains. “Anything inclusive, on the other hand, will have value in the long run. Since we have never looked at exclusive value creation, we are at an advantage at MARG, even in the downturn. We have started at the bottom of the pyramid and we have kept things affordable. We promised our projects will have good value 10-20 years later and that still holds true.”
The Chennai-headquartered MARG is a diversified infrastructure development company executing deep excavation projects, residential and commercial high-rise towers, power sub-stations, high-power transmission lines, ports and logistics, industrial clusters and living spaces. Among its more famous projects are the ongoing Karaikal Port, and MARG Swarna-bhoomi, a 1,000-acre ‘global city’ between Chennai and Pondicherry, launched last year with a high-profile live music concert for a 20,000-strong home crowd by A R Rahman, whose music Reddy says he enjoys very much.
But the promoter of Chennai’s first marathon prefers the quiet life, beginning his day with his family, and a spot of meditation and exercise, and ending it with more time at home. His wife, Rajini, is also a first generation entrepreneur, running an independent knowledge BPO, Exemplarr Worldwide. “She is more educated than I am, and she has a public school background. It inspired me to get an advanced executive management degree from Kellogg’s Business School a couple of years back. Earlier, I had family responsibilities and there was no opportunity,” smiles the commerce post-graduate from Delhi who schooled in mofussil Andhra Pradesh. His original ambition was to become a civil servant.
Instead, “I worked in an investment company for six years before I decided to begin my own business,” says Reddy. “The difference between being an executive and being an entrepreneur is huge, I found. Keeping relationships going — with stakeholders, bankers, the government — is the biggest challenge that keeps you going at the end of the day.” A dangerously rough patch in 1994, which left him with multiple debts and only three employees, was a time when, “you have done your best”. “Irrespective of who they were, everybody had advice to give. Credibility had to be built again. One just had to take it in the right spirit and move on.” Indeed, he has.
Today, Reddy’s greatest satisfaction comes from a growing organization that thinks innovatively. “Construction results in the creation of tangible, physical assets. I come from an agrarian family. Construction is not very different. You sow a seed, you remain anchored in your faith, and take everything happily and it grows.”