After Nano, Tata plans Rs32,000 house

After driving in a low-cost Nano car, the Tata group is now readying a ‘People’s Home’.

Tata Steel, a group company, is working on the low-cost basic house that can be constructed at a cost of about €500 (Rs32,000).
Under the People’s Home project, the low-cost houses will be made available in the form of prefabricated (prefab) kits.

The kit will have all the “parts” that are required to build a house and which can be assembled at the site.

Sumitesh Das, chief of Tata Steel’s global research programme, said, “The pilot for the 500 euros house is currently going on in West Bengal and we are going to roll out 30 more pilots this year. We will be rolling out these highly affordable homes by the year-end on a national scale.”

Though being handled by Tata Steel, these homes would have a significant amount of non-steel component. The company is currently talking to various agencies including the Coir Board and the Jute Board for sourcing material for wall cladding and other interiors.

Apart from the open market opportunity, the company is also pinning hopes on the mass housing schemes taken up by various state governments for its houses.

The company is putting in place a team to erect the houses which are aimed at the homeless population in rural India. According to Das, the team will erect a house with a flat roof using the kits in about 20 square metres in about seven days. This flat roof model would cost about 500 euros.

Like in Nano, the low-cost houses, too, would have variants. While the basic model in 20 square metre area with flat roof would come for €500, the upgraded model will come in 30 square metres and cost around €700 (Rs44,000), and for a solar panel on rooftop it will cost more.

Tata Steel is also in talks with various manufacturers for setting up of facilities at various locations in the country, apart from integrators and village panchayats. Das said localised manufacturing facilities help generate employment.

“We will have the designs and the manufacturers will enter into MoUs with us for producing them locally,” he said.

Though the company has different variants on the drawing board, a final format of the variants would arrived only after analysing the feedback captured through the pilot projects.

“When we did our first pilot project, we realised that people in the rural areas sit in their verandahs (corridors). If we incorporate the verandah, the cost is much higher. Similarly, since families in the rural areas share the same roof with partitions, we will have to accommodate such needs in our designs.”

While the company is currently scouting for manufacturers to localise the production of panels and other components in the kit, based on the research, it is assuring that the low-cost house would last about 20 years.