Salim replied on Friday, April 2, 2010 05:00 PM PST
Dear Ali Khan,
It appears that you have absolutely no experience or knowledge of the construction business as you are posing the questions on this forum. My suggestion to you will be to stay away from this business. If you decide to get into the business, beware of the following:
1- your enemy#1 is Thekadar, this guy will not let go of any chance to screw you over. Easily add about 1 million rupees in addition to the agreed upon supervisory cost. Despite overcharging you, he will compromise your reputation and quality of construction.
2- The labor mafia will try its level best to misuse your construction material in any way possible, e.g. burning "Diyaar wood" for cooking food, stealing anything they can as long as they can get away with it.
3- Technicians, i.e. carpenter, painter, flooring tech, roofing tech, windows tech, electrician, etc. will take most of their money upfront and will show up when they feel like it (they are great multi taskers, they work on several projects at the same time, lets just say they have many projects and working on it.... you will see it). When you ask them that why they are not showing up, they will have ten excuses on the tip of their tongue meaning, like 'sir jee material nahi hai', if you get them material, then 'jee paint ka kaam ho jai pir may kaam karoon ga', if nothing else, always count on their kid or wife getting sick.
4- Somehow, you have completed your project, now the buyers will low ball you and at that point you are so frustrated with the whole process that you just want to see the property, profit or not.
Now dont get the wrong impression, its not all doom & gloom. You can be successfull at this, provided:
1-if you can be present there atleast 5-6 hours on a daily basis.
2-You do all the buying of the materials.
3-You are well versed in the language that these people understand, i.e. bhen ki %$^&, Maa ki ^%$#, etc. It will not hurt, if you are comfortable with backslapping someone and throw a punch or two on occassion, basically "Waderashahi Nizam" type.
If you have the above traits, you can be successful and if you are a Sharif Aadmi, these people will have your for lunch in which case, my suggesstion to you is dont invest you hard earned money into construction business.
Just my $0.02. |