In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) in India's real estate sector was largely confined to the customer-facing side of the business. Virtual property tours, chatbots answering buyer queries, personalised recommendations and smarter digital marketing were among the first applications developers experimented with.
That was the easy part.
Now, a much bigger shift is happening behind construction barricades, inside project offices and across boardrooms where developers are increasingly relying on AI to decide what to build, when to build it, how much it will cost and whether a project is likely to run into trouble long before delays begin to show up on site.
The conversations around AI inside real estate companies have changed remarkably over the past year.
Also Read: GenAI can add $14-17 billion to India's real estate economy: Report
The opportunity is massive. India's real estate sector is currently valued at $650 billion, projected to become a $5.8-trillion industry by 2047, according to the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF). But to get there, developers will have to build more, build faster and build smarter. Increasingly, they believe AI can help do all three. A joint EY-Parthenon and CREDAI report estimates GenAI alone could add $14-17 billion to the sector's Gross Value Added over the next seven years by improving productivity, shortening project timelines and boosting sales.
"About 18 months ago, developers were asking us, 'What can AI do?' Today, the question is, 'How quickly can we roll this out on our next project?'," Iesh Dixit, co-founder and CEO of construction management platform Powerplay, told ET Online.
That shift reflects a broader change across the industry.
According to the EY-Parthenon-CREDAI report, developers adopting GenAI could see 30-50% higher sales velocity, around 30% faster product launches, 20-50% gains in workforce productivity and 20-50% lower customer acquisition costs, driven by AI-powered customer intelligence, automated design workflows and predictive project monitoring.
