Education
“Life was about getting up at five in the morning every day and going for a run—wet or cold, windy or balmy.” It taught him discipline, hard work and work-play balance, he says.
“Life was about getting up at five in the morning every day and going for a run—wet or cold, windy or balmy.” It taught him discipline, hard work and work-play balance, he says.
In 1995 together with an ex-roommate as a minority partner, Garcha launched People.com to help companies in the Valley find IT staff.
In 2000 Garcha and his partner sold People.com to TMP Worldwide, parent of Monster.com, at twice its $55 million top line. Garcha was wealthy and not yet 30.
The next year Garcha decided—long before the more celebrated recent move of Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin—that he preferred the life of Singapore. After a few years of polo playing around the world (he ultimately captained the Singapore national team to a silver cup at the Southeast Asian Games in 2007) Garcha looked around for a business that fit his new, more relaxed lifestyle.
Garcha launched Elevation with a three-pronged strategy. First, it would only deal in ground-level homes as opposed to high-rise condominiums. Second, it would not build and sell residential units but rather operate on a build-own-rent model. Third, it would aim upscale.
Elevation started buying worn properties in the prime areas designated as Good Class Bungalow, or GCB zones, in Singapore. Prices averaged US$350 to $380 per square foot then versus $1,180 to $1,460 today. There are only 39 such zones where the plot size must be a minimum of 1,400 square meters. And Singapore’s total stock of 2,400 GCBs makes them the most coveted form of housing.
Elevation tears down the existing structures and hires ¬expensive designers and architects to create spiffy domiciles for an elite clientele for rents up to $35,000 monthly.
Today its GCB portfolio of ten properties stands at over $200 million. Garcha will go outside that zone for special properties, as in 2007, when Elevation beat seven other bidders to pay $860 per square foot, or $62 million, for a 72,000-square-foot plot in Sentosa Cove.
In less than eight years Elevation has amassed 44 exclusive homes with a potential yearly income of $14 million when fully rented. The business model is assisted by rising residential values and tenants willing to pay top dollar for luxury ¬living, even provisionally. A typical client: Australian mining tycoon Nathan Tinkler, who recently moved to Singapore and rented two bungalows from Elevation.