[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How Amrita Gupta is making real estate industry inclusive

Amrita Gupta was always driven by creative activities like painting, dancing, and design since childhood. Little did she know that these interests would one day shape her career path.

Gupta recalls her teenage years when she helped in renovating their house. She would eagerly sit with designers and architects, observing their work and help them in selecting designs.

Soon, this passion translated into her career as a designer.

Gupta is the Director at the Manglam Group, her family business, and is the Founder and President of CREDAI Rajasthan Women’s Wing. She is also the central head of CREDAI National Women's Wing.

Shift to interior designing

After completing her schooling, Gupta was sure she wanted to pursue a course in designing. Coming from a family which was into the jewellery business, she decided to get into jewellery designing.

Once her course was completed, she joined her father’s business as a jewellery designer. After working for four years, she got married in 2006.

When Gupta joined the Manglam Group in 2006, a business house, headquartered in Jaipur, Rajasthan, working in sectors like real estate, healthcare, hospitality and amusement parks, her plan was to expand the business into jewellery designing. However, due to the recession around 2008, this idea could not come to fruition.

But Gupta did not lose hope.

She transitioned into working as an interior designer for various projects under the Manglam Group.

“This shift was not easy as I had little idea about buildings and real estate at that time. However, the process that goes into creative designing is the same and that worked for me,” she tells HerStory.

Among the various projects she worked on, Gupta remembers Manglam’s Aroma, a residential building in Jaipur. This was one of her initial projects in the interior design space.

“All the mock units were sold out. This motivated me to move forward on this path,” she adds.

Gupta explains that although she initially ventured into interior design, she also played an active role in designing buildings alongside architects.

She recalls a project from 2013 when she designed a clubhouse. For this project, Gupta collaborated with architects not just to design the structure of the buildings, but also took charge of its interiors.

Around 2016, she noticed a boom in the hospitality industry, with many big hotels entering Jaipur. “This field fascinated me, and expanding the business into hospitality made perfect sense,” says Gupta.

She recalls that when she pitched the idea to other members of the company, it required a lot effort to convince them. Gupta identified a piece of land owned by the group near the Jaipur-Delhi Highway and along with the other architects started designing a property. At the end of 2018, the Marriott Group partnered with them for the project.

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Gupta elucidates that the initial design work began before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the work came to a standstill during the pandemic.

“After COVID, some renovations had to be made to cater to the changed needs of the customers. For instance, I noticed that post-pandemic, people desired less number of people and extravagance in their weddings, so we redesigned some aspects of the property accordingly,” she explains.

The property will be launched soon.

In 2019, Gupta established the CREDAI Women’s Wing in Rajasthan, a part of the Rajasthan chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI), the apex body for private real estate developers in India.

Under this initiative, she launched various projects, including one that offers paid contracts to women laborers and another that trains women in painting to help them secure contracts. She also organised awareness campaigns, networking events, and mentorship programmes to encourage the active involvement of women in the real estate industry.

“We are targeting women who are in the real estate business but are not actively involved due to the perception that real estate is a man’s field. By providing platforms for women to connect, learn, and grow, they can overcome barriers and play active roles in the real estate sector,” she adds.

Further advocating for the role of women in real estate, Gupta says that women bring an emotional value to their work. “They can understand the needs of a house and transform it into a home,” she says.

Starting with 30 women, the wing now has 180 women.

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From starting out as a jewellery designer to venturing into real estate and hospitality, Gupta has been adaptable and an opportunity seeker. However, she has faced her fair share of challenges in her career.

She shares that when she started in design, there was less judgment or objection, as it was commonly seen as a woman’s field. However, as she transitioned into real estate and hospitality, she began to experience bias.

She explains that people often did not take her seriously. They would reach out to other men in the company, recheck her orders, and view her more as a family member in the business rather than a professional.

“All these challenges only motivated me and made me more determined to succeed. My family’s support was invaluable and gave me even more confidence,” she adds.

Furthermore, Gupta went on to share three fundamental principles that have guided her career in real estate–“Aim to satisfy the customer, understand your competition, and find ways to add value to your company.”

“Nothing can surpass your determination. Believe in yourself and in the work you’ve done,” she says.