Indian real estate has been one of the most resilient asset classes, creating wealth for a lot of Indians who chose to invest in it. With the Indian growth story and advent of technology, real estate is on a very strong growth trajectory. The industry is projected to grow to a $5-10 trillion market by 2047, contributing nearly one-fifth of the country’s GDP
The industry is transforming but the process to become a part of it has been still stuck in old ages. One needs to go through multiple steps from identifying the right area, the right asset, the right opportunity as just the start. This is followed by multiple rounds of due diligence and checks on the real estate one wants to purchase and then plethora of paperwork that follows the purchase.
This does not even factor in the pain of taking on massive home loans that tied families to long-term debt and the pain of managing real estate.
However, the rise of digital real estate is creating a new way to invest in real estate. Technology enabled platforms now enable investors to complete what was once a manual, paper-heavy process entirely online—often at far smaller ticket sizes.
What is digital real estate?
In simple terms, digital real estate is the digital representation of financial rights over actual physical real estate. Instead of purchasing full real estate like a house, land or a holiday home, with digital real estate Indians can now own a small share of the property enabled by digital real estate.
Digital real estate is verified, due diligence done and all data is accessible for potential investors to see. The data of digital real estate is recorded on blockchain creating a transparency layer. Just as a mutual fund unit enables you to own a part of a stock portfolio managed by an asset manager, Digital real estate lets you own premium real estate without the hassle of managing it.
How does digital real estate work?
Clean and verified real estate is broken down into smaller units, called digital tokens or digital squarefeets. These represent square feet of underlying physical property.
People come and purchase these ‘digital square feet’ through platforms like Alt DRX. The returns are proportional to the ownership of individual investors. People can own as small as one digital square foot starting at just Rs 10,000, this enables a larger Indian population to become part of the real estate growth story and make it part of their portfolios instead of it being a once in lifetime purchase for many.
How are online platforms enabling this transformation?
The beauty of digital real estate lies in the way how traditionally complex problems are transformed by simple digital led solutions. Platforms such as Alt DRX are simplifying the time consuming, paperwork and manpower heavy journey onto a single platform in a few easy steps.
Property Discovery & Verification: Investors can browse through curated, pre-vetted properties listed on the platform.
Onboarding & Investment: Digital sign-up, seamless KYC, and flexible purchase options make investing accessible.
Investment Management: Dashboards allow investors to track ownership, view returns, receive pricing updates, and even participate in secondary sales when they wish to exit.
The Way Ahead
Years ago the stock market was paperwork heavy and multiple people involved in every transaction. This got changed with the advent of technology. Digital Real Estate is on the path to create this transformation for real estate where it becomes a click-and-invest reality.
With India’s real estate market expanding rapidly, and with digital real estate the real democratisation will happen. Equity and mutual fund markets have 100 million participants, the next 100 million participants in real estate will be digital first.
Whether for retail investors looking to diversify portfolios or for institutions seeking transparent and liquid exposure to property, the model has the potential to reshape how Indians perceive and participate in real estate investing. Owning real estate was a dream for many, now owning Digital Square Foot will become a reality for anyone who wants to.
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