ASBL x Times: Rethinking Urban Growth

NewsVoir
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], November 20: The Times of India hosted the inaugural Times Developers Dialogue - "Building a Collaborative City: The Role of Gated Communities in Hyderabad's Urban Future", bringing together leaders from development, regulation, finance, and market research to discuss how the city can grow responsibly while staying livable and affordable.
The panel featured Ajitesh Korupolu, Founder & CEO of ASBL; Dr. N. Satyanarayana, IAS, Chairperson, TGRERA; Sandip Patnaik, Senior Managing Director, JLL Hyderabad; and Vamsi Krishna B, Director Finance, Primark Developers. The panel represented different but equally critical perspectives from the developer's view of market behavior and design innovation, to insights on policy, regulation, and data-driven planning. This diversity set the tone for a balanced conversation on how Hyderabad's urban ecosystem can evolve sustainably while maintaining its reputation as India's most livable city.
Ajitesh set the tone by arguing that transparent land auctions are good for Hyderabad because they speed up land access, ensure cleaner titles when the government is the supplier, and create clear price discovery. For younger developers, he noted, auctions reduce years of relationship-led acquisition to a simple, competitive process freeing teams to focus on product quality rather than paperwork. He also stressed that trust and compliance go hand-in-hand with growth, and that standardized disclosures and digital processes ultimately protect homebuyers and stabilize delivery cycles.
Looking ahead, the panel discussed how Hyderabad can handle density, infrastructure load, and affordability over the next five years. Ajitesh framed livability at higher densities as a design-and-operations challenge: plan for more lifts and shorter wait times, use traffic consultants to optimize internal circulation before approvals, increase amenities from the usual ~3% to ~5.5-6% of areas where feasible, and, most importantly, scale services (security, housekeeping, maintenance) because "amenities are 30%, services are 70% of daily life." He explained how ASBL is building digital SOPs and handing over app-based maintenance playbooks so resident associations can run complex systems reliably after possession.
On city form, Ajitesh supported tall towers in well-equipped business districts, linked to wide roads, drainage, mobility, and utilities while keeping context-appropriate height controls elsewhere. Density, he added, lowers per-capita service costs and attracts better on-site services, but it only works when public infrastructure and building operations are upgraded together.
The session closed with agreement on near-term actions: deeper digitization of approvals and compliance, clear post-handover standards for RWAs, better data sharing to predict bottlenecks in traffic and water, and design codes that tie height to service capacity. Overall, the Dialogue emphasized a simple idea: Hyderabad's advantage comes from working together - policy that invites investment, development that delivers livability, regulation that builds trust, and data that keeps everyone accountable.
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