In the US, the trip might take more than a day, but in Bangalore, anyone can hop from Tribeca to Brooklyn, stop off at the White House, and head out to Melrose in just a few minutes.
The miraculous journey unfolds in a new housing development in Bangalore’s Electronic City named “Concorde Manhattans”, which sits on prime real estate across from a Wipro Technologies campus. While location is the major draw, developer Concorde Group is also betting that its American naming scheme will help attract Wipro’s globetrotting employees.
“Manhattans is a brand associated with grandeur,” said the company’s marketing manager Alok Mishra.
Turns out naming each street and section of the gated community also was an exercise in workplace bonding. “We searched the Net, and everybody gave one name,” said the company’s human resource executive Gangadhar Gowda.
As buyers in India rush to book new suburban luxury flats before ground-breaking—with prices topping Rs45,000 per square foot, according to one report—developers must do more than acquire land and churn out projects: They must generate names by the dozen.
HIGH ASPIRATIONS (Graphic)
While no specific data exists on the subject, observers of the high-rises increasingly gracing the outskirts of cities note that the names tend to be of faraway places or concepts that conjure images of gardens and greens, luxury and exclusivity. Developers describe the process of naming as largely random, turning to the Internet for inspiration or even their own mothers.
But as they jockey to distinguish themselves from the cookie-cutter feel of developments and largely similar floor plans, some are finding they need to brand projects better, starting with the name.
“Many people go with English because they are more aspirational,” said Jagdeep Kapoor, managing director at Samiska Marketing Consultants, as he explains the phenomenon. “If they can’t pronounce it, then it’s very aspirational.”
Gurgaon, the suburb south of New Delhi increasingly defined as a gated community mecca, is filled with such aspirational places. In DLF City, Phase V, residential developments such as Wellington Estate, Princeton Estate and Carleton Estate overlook a landscape that is still defined mostly by construction and open dirt fields. A handful of security guards sit at the entrance to Princeton Estate, keeping track of everyone that comes in and out. Manicured shrubs and short, pruned trees line the paved roads that lead to each of the 20-storey peach-coloured towers that, again, have their own security guards.
The residents, though, aren’t quite sure what to make of the name. When B.K. Sharma first moved to the complex, he was dead set against the name, for example. “Once I had a big discussion with my brother,” said Sharma, who is a retired railways officer. “Our childhood has passed in total Indian culture, but the first name is giving (the idea) that we are living in an alien area.”
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