Delhi real estate's rural potbelly: Hip eateries & galleries coming up in villages like Shahpur Jat and Hauz Khas Village

Date : Feb 9, 2013

NEW DELHI: If you want to get to one of Delhi's rare Bihari cuisine restaurants Potbelly on the Rooftop, you don't walk into a mall or into the hippest markets in South Delhi. You will find yourself in the middle of an urban village in the Capital - Shahpur Jat - with puddles, cow dung and people reminiscing about little patches of farmlands.

Puja Sahu and Vivita Relan, the 30-something owners of Potbelly on the Rooftop, began with a seed capital of Rs 20 lakh a year ago and are now racing to break even. And as they laugh their way to the bank, they have also helped Jitender Panwar, a 37-year-old who recalls his father plough a farm not far from the restaurant, make a killing from his land. It is a real estate curiosity that is unfolding in Delhi - some of its coolest hangouts are coming up in odd hamlets, sleepy places that once boasted just the ruins of monuments but make eminent monetary sense to entrepreneurs with a great idea and a tight budget. It is also changing the fortunes of these villages.

Shahpur Jat's neighbourhood Hauz Khas Village has already transformed itself. Hauz Khas Village, saysRohit Kapoor of a home-styled Italian cafe called Pizzeria Rossa, was a dull place five years ago.



Hauz Khas Village has now exploded into a place with over 60 restaurants and cafes, art galleries, studios, curio shops and bookstores. Parvinder Singh of Hauz Khas Village earns handsomely - over Rs 6 lakh a month - from the two buildings that he owns. Six years ago, he got only a third of this.

Sahu, whose clientele includes writer Chetan Bhagat and filmmaker Dibakar Banerji, among others, now prides herself on choosing Shahpur Jat over the pricey Khan Market and the Saket malls a few kilometres away. She pays just RS 45,000 as rent, about a tenth of what she would have paid elsewhere. "The footfalls might be a little less compared with a Khan Market eatery, but we still do good business," says Sahu.

Rents in Shahpur Jat hover around 50-100 per sq ft while those in Hauz Khas Village are 100-150 per sq ft. In comparison, rentals in Khan Market would be no less than 1,200-1,500 per sq ft, if anything is available. Panwar says rents in Shahpur Jat, which now has designer stores, bookshops and cafes, have risen 10-fold in the past eight years. The big and the powerful are spotted too. Shahpur Jat, residents say, is frequented by members of the Gandhi family and top industrialists who come here for the variety on offer.

What it does not offer is infrastructure. The lanes are cramped, roads are dirty and it is difficult to find parking space. As there are no existing building laws for these urban villages, a lot of the real estate is illegal. In Delhi, these villages - which were not acquired for urban planning - are called Lal Doras. Myna Mukherjee, director of the art gallery Engendered, has got 3,000 sq ft spread over two floors in Shahpur Jat, housing the gallery, residences for artists and a rooftop where she organises concerts. "It's still fairly affordable and is a centrally located place, but the staircases are narrow so we have trouble taking our artwork up," she says.

source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/real-estate/news/delhi-real-estates-rural-potbelly-hip-eateries-galleries-coming-up-in-villages-like-shahpur-jat-and-hauz-khas-village/articleshow/18408873.cms