Real-ly!

A mobile real-estate agency in Bangalore that breaks several… well… ground rules.

Sevenraj, Bangalore-based realtor.

Ayesha Matthan

I bring real estate to the doorstep as I don’t believe in wasting time,” says Sevenraj, whose agency by the same name terms itself a “mobile estate”.

Sevenraj and his team drive around in a car in the Central Business District of Bangalore. The car is done up in flashy red-and-white colours and has the phone number and Web site spelt across. “It has an inbuilt TV on which clients can view property sites available for sale. It is also loaded with a compass, camera and a laptop.”

Query him about the red-and-white combination dominating his business — his suit, socks, shoes, handkerchief, mobile phone, office, furniture, stationery and cars are all in red and white — and he has this to say, “When I started out, I thought about the whole aspect of brand-building and the public identifying with it.” He came to the conclusion that film stars are largely recognised by their trademark dress code — like the late Tamil superstar MGR with his dark glasses. “At first people used to laugh at my sense of dressing, but it’s easier for clients to identify and stop me,” he says.

Another recurring feature in his business is the number seven. Apart from the ‘seven’ in his name, his blazer has seven buttons and he knows seven languages — Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malalayam, Marathi and English. “The moment I recognise the language spoken from the accent and tone of the client’s voice, I immediately reply to them in their language,” says this polyglot.

There is an interesting reason behind his name too. As the seventh child, he was named No. 7 by his father, who didn’t want his children to have names indicative of their caste or religion. Hailing from Badagara in Kozhikode district of Kerala, his family later moved to Bangalore. “When my father admitted me at a school, they didn’t accept ‘No. 7’ and changed it to spell ‘Seven’,” he says.

Inspired by his father, an artist who carved figures out of ivory, Seven had enrolled at the Government College of Art, Chennai. But financial troubles forced him to drop out of college and he started dabbling in the world of films. “Raj was a very popular name in the industry — there was a Sathyaraj and a Mohanraj, so I added ‘Raj’ to ‘Seven’ and it has stuck since then.”

After doing small roles in a few Kannada films for about eight months, he was out of work and despaired.

“I used to sleep on the railway track in Chennai in a bid to attempt suicide, but no trains went past!” Then he worked for a General Insurance firm which, he says, made him “a real businessman”.

Sevenraj recalled how when he was in class V or VI a friend’s father had casually asked him for advice on a house to buy. “I pointed to an empty house that I knew and I was rewarded Rs 100!” The memory of this resulted in a real-estate business in Bangalore the late-1970s.

In five years he plans to retire and work at his ashram and charitable trust.

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