India’s next growth story will not be defined by how high its cities rise, but by how effectively they connect people to homes, jobs and opportunity. As Western India accelerates its urban transformation through infrastructure expansion, capital inflows and emerging business hubs, a larger question emerges: are we building cities that are not just valuable, but also liveable and accessible?
This question shaped the panel discussion, Building the Next India: Cities, Capital and Aspirations, at the News18 Rising Bharat Summit – West Edition, presented by HDFC Bank and held in Mumbai. The conversation examined how housing finance can respond to changing buyer profiles and help ensure that urban growth creates wider access to homeownership.
Sumant Rampal, Group Head for Mortgage Business, HDFC Bank, brought the discussion back to end users rather than investors. He noted that the average age at which Indians buy a home has fallen from around 40 a decade ago to 32-33 today. The next step, he said, should be to bring this closer to 27-28, allowing more people to purchase and use a home earlier in their working lives.
The opportunity also extends beyond India’s largest cities. While demand for homes remains strong across the top seven urban markets, he said the housing ecosystem must deepen further across Tier 3 and Tier 4 towns. As infrastructure and employment expand into smaller centres, housing finance will have to keep pace with the aspirations emerging there.
He also challenged the perception that the mortgage market is driven mainly by loans worth several crores. “The reality is that the home-loan market, on average, all banks put together, has an average ticket size of ₹40 lakh,” he said. The figure points to a much wider market of end users seeking homes for their own use rather than only as investments.
Another major opportunity lies among self-employed borrowers. He noted that housing discussions often focus on salaried professionals, even though India has a large population of entrepreneurs and small-business owners. With nearly eight crore MSMEs in the country, this segment has considerable demand for better homes but may not always fit conventional income-assessment models. As one of India’s largest MSME lenders, HDFC Bank is well placed to understand these income patterns and extend housing finance to a broader range of borrowers.
Widening access, however, cannot be the responsibility of lenders alone. He stressed the need for developers, governments and financial institutions to work together to bring more borrowers into the formal housing market. Real estate supports a wide ecosystem of businesses and jobs, making homeownership relevant not only to individual families but also to wider economic growth.
The broader panel reinforced why finance and urban planning must move together. Dr Niranjan Hiranandani, Co-Founder, Hiranandani Group, argued that infrastructure should be planned before residential and commercial development. Shashank Jain, CEO and MD, BGRE and Brookfield India REIT, added that affordability must include the total cost of ownership. A lower-priced home located far from employment centres may still impose a high cost through long commutes, reduced family time and poorer well-being.
The larger takeaway was clear: making India’s cities more inclusive will require more than building additional homes. It will depend on financing that reflects how different Indians earn, infrastructure that connects housing with opportunity and coordinated action that allows more families to become homeowners earlier in life.
Know more: https://www.news18features.com/risingbharatsummit/
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