NEW DELHI: Bengaluru-based Primus Senior Living is looking to invest about Rs 1,500 crore in the next few years to expand its multi-generational living communities across six cities. The company will be investing around Rs 470 crore in the next few quarters to launch about three projects. It also plans to cross Rs 380 crore revenue by the financial year 2025-26.
The company had been developing senior living communities for senior citizens but has recently pivoted to develop projects which will cater to both senior citizens and younger generation, which it calls multi-generational living community. In conversation with ETRealty, Adarsh Narahari, founder & managing director of the company talked about the reason behind the pivot, expansion plans into various cities, how the company manage these projects and overall industry’s perspective. Edited excerpts:
What is your business model?
At Primus Senior Living, we operate three types of businesses. We develop multi-generation housing, we develop stand alone senior living, and we have a operating platform for taking care of elders, which is a combination of both technology and services on the multi generation and senior living. Currently, we are developing about 4,500 homes across six cities.
We have about 35 acres land under outright purchase which is currently under development across six cities.
Apart from that, we prefer the joint venture or joint development model. In Kolkata, we have tied up with Merlin Group, Srijan Group and Primarc. In Chennai, we have tied up with BSCPL, in Mumbai we are working with Dosti Realty, in Pune it is Nainaknavare Developers and in Hyderabad we are working with Arunoday Life Spaces.
We also have some 500 units under development management (DM) model. But we don’t want to increase this number further.
Why are you pivoting from senior living to multi-generational model?
Senior Living is less than 15% now. So we are pivoting to become purely multi-generational going forward.
The reason that we pivoted to be multi-generation is that we believe this is what new India wants. Different generations want to live together, but because of the current social dynamics, they don’t want to live under the same roof. So we believe we are providing a solution for the want of a customer, which has come from the customers. We believe that we are giving an emotional solution to both sets of generations of children and parents.
Can you give details about your operating platform?
On the operating platform side, we have a brand called Marzi, wherein we do two things, we take care of elders within the community that we develop, and we have a technology and service platform for elders beyond our community.
We launched it just one month back and we are looking to cater to elders who are not living with us in our communities. We want to cater to one million elders in the next five years.
Which segment contributes most to the revenue? Do you see the ratio changing in coming years?
About 80-85 per cent of our revenue comes from the selling apartments and rest 15 per cent comes from the services that we offer. But with the launch of Marzi, in few years we expect technology platform to contribute about 50 per cent to our overall revenue.
How many employees you have and how do you manage the projects?
For services, we run our own teams. So we hire, we have recruited people from the hospitality background, from the medical background. And then we have product and technology teams in our office, and they design and run all of our services.
Typically, each community, for example, if a community has 200 elders, you would find around 60 people who will be needed to take care of them. So for 4,500 homes that we are currently developing, we will need around 2,000 people to take care of them.
We have a partnership with Bridge Health, a healthcare with a company. We also have an in-house medical team. In each project we have a full time doctor, physiotherapists and nurses. It takes about seven minutes to respond to any kind of emergency.
Doesn’t that increase your overall operating cost?
It does. But we are also providing proportionate service, right? See, facility management companies have these people on somebody else’s payrolls. We have it on our own payrolls.
For us, it’s not about operating margin. For us about quality of services. The reason we keep them on our goals is relationship building and quality of services. It’s probably more profitable to outsource. We are not doing it.
What was your revenue and profit in FY24? What is your expectation from FY25 and FY26?
In FY24, our revenue was around Rs 110 crore and our profit was about Rs 32 crore. In FY25, we expect to close at Rs 180 crore revenue and Rs 40 crore profit. We want to touch Rs 380 crore revenue in FY26 with an expectation of Rs 76 crore profit.
When did you raise funds?
We raised about $20 million in November 2024 from General Catalyst and Gruhas. We diluted 20 per cent equity in Primus Senior Living.
Which are the cities that you are present in?
We are present in Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. In Bengaluru, we have four projects, three in Kolkata, two each in Chennai and Mumbai and one each in Hyderabad and Pune.
What are your expansion plans?
We think each of these cities can have 10 more projects but in the long term. In the next two years, we are looking to invest around Rs 350 crore.
How many projects are operational as of now? And how many you plan to launch?
As of now we operate two communities and we have about 1,800 units under-construction. Further we will be adding over 2,000 homes in the next two years. We are also developing villa projects in Chennai and Navi Mumbai and soon will be coming up with a project in Bengaluru. Overall we plan to develop around 500 villas.
We are launching Primus Sangama in a week which is a multi-generation project. The project has 306 units with 1, 2, 3 and 3.5 BHK formats. We will invest about Rs 200 crore in the project through its lifecycle.
We plan to launch two projects in the first quarter of FY26. We will launch one project – Primus Ganges with 180 units in Kolkata in April with an overall investment of Rs 120 crore and one project in Thane with 180 units and about Rs 150 crore investment.
How many projects you plan to complete in FY26?
Every year we plan to deliver about 500-600 homes. Ideally, we want to deliver atleast 1,000 homes every year but I see that happening in five years time.
What is the average maintenance cost you charge in your project?
On an average, we charge about Rs 14,000 per couple per month (without food) which translates to Rs 10 per sq ft per month. Meals are at an additional cost of Rs 6,500 per person per month.
What is your take on the competition in the senior living industry?
It is too small a business as of now to call it a competition. Only handful of players across the country are currently developing such projects. Penetration of senior living community in developed countries is 6-11 per cent. Compare to that, we are at a very initial stage and still figuring out the way ahead.
