"COLUA": Eco-Friendly Co-Living For Indian University Students

Team code of conduct

Members are responsible for adhering to the code of conduct and will be held accountable for failure to do so.

• Everyone must show mutual respect for each other
• Attendance and Timekeeping must be adhered to
• No swearing or abusive language to be used
• Abuse of any type is not acceptable
• Be considerate
• Respecting the privacy of others
• Everyone works toward common goal
• Hold each other accountable to staying on task and on topic
• Everyone must contribute positively to the group in terms of ideas, knowledge, leadership, attitude, creativity, etc.

Living together in student accommodation: performances, boundaries and homemaking.

A Student accommodation: Who cares?

How cohousing can make us happier(and live longer)

Increasing Number of Young Adults Joining College Reignites Debate on the Most Appropriate Student Accommodation.

Industry and market

The idea of COLUA is to provide co-living lifestyle to students facing accommodation problem while studying in Indian Universities as mentioned before. As argued by Hoekstra and Wiedmann (2014), COLUA co-living is offering shared accommodation in a sustainable manner which will reduce ecological footprint as energy will be shared among people. COLUA aims creating a safe place for students’ where they can lead a healthy life and learn as well. After reviewing the journal Seyfang, Park and Smith (2013), it has been understood that this initiative is going to pursue the need of being energy efficient in terms of sharing resources. Therefore, as supported by Garg, Gupta and Jha (2014), COLUA co-living is targeting Indian university students from a wealthy economic background who are looking for affordable housing in recent times to serve future needs of environment and transformed consumer preferences as well.

As per the study of Garg, Gupta and Jha (2014), due to unhygienic condition of university hostels, students have to spent more resources to rent a house or flat yet they are consistently being deprived of elements required for a healthy lifestyle. COLUA’s aim is to provide remedies to such issues and prevent students from living in isolated locations far from university.

According to Hoekstra and Wiedmann (2014), the business is targeting high class families who have migrated from their hometown to a place in search of better education to solve issues of undeserving rents for hostel accommodation, excessive use of resources and carbon footprints. The unique selling point of business it is sustainable in nature and covers three pillars of sustainability; economic, environmental and social and resolves the issue of unhygienic accommodation across students’ hostels (Hoekstra & Wiedmann, 2014). As referred in Ng (2018), the successful implementation of co-living student accommodation in Hong Kong can be explored in order to gain some of the ideas while working on this project in India.

It has a promising future as it has a purpose to serve towards society. Students’ issue must be treated with highest priority as it is a question of their future. Moreover, it represents a country’s educational infrastructure. Not only university campus and faculty but also their lifestyle influence their academic performance. On this context, the potential of growth is high and it can remain competitive by constructing such a business idea.

As companies are focusing on transforming large shared communities in private living spaces questions occur regarding students’ mentality if they do not want to live with apart from his or her favourite mates (Seyfang, Park & Smith, 2013). Problems will be the conflict among them regarding the common bathroom or shared ration. As far as the study of Wyatt (2018) is concerned, successful execution of shared housing can be spotted in USA as well. Question of business sustainability comes as community is not a product that can be manufactured in factory. It must be created. A housing for students cannot be named eco-friendly, it must be created through sustainable practices. Violation of community rules can bring forth risk to the business.

The need of eco-friendly housing

The profit and revenue will be high as according to the market trend with the rise of population and need of hygienic accommodation people are showing interest for eco-friendly housings. The news of such sustainable project might be delivered through several advertisement procedure both virtually and traditionally. More precisely, to mitigate the issue of students regarding accommodation in India, it will be profitable enough and has created much interest within the market already. The potential is high as students are increasing facing unhygienic atmosphere across hostels of Indian universities. Therefore, such co-living initiative has potential value as far as students’ need of hygienic accommodation is concerned.

According to Woolthuis et al. (2013), the co-living student accommodation is being built with purpose of providing healthy atmosphere to develop a collaborative, well-connected social environment in an era of technological dependency. The business will be sustainable as it wishes to enhance work life balance of community people and it will help to ingrate students. As described in Frichot and Runting (2017), it will gain immediate competitive edge in market as most of the real estate industry concentrates in building housing complexes rather than addressing the migrating students’ crisis due to unhygienic hostels of Indian universities.

(Image of co-living housing: created by author)

First of all, as far as the study of Frichot and Runting, (2017) is concerned, it can be said that from dealing in real estate industry if an idea has occurred to do something against the problem of university students is undoubtedly innovative. Innovation is one of the major factors in terms of gaining competitive advantage in market. Besides, the housing must be reliable in terms of quality, flexibility and promised sustainability aspects. A good set of principals would be help to resist violation of policies and sustainability will be maintained influencing competitive advantage. Good quality affordable, eco-friendly atmosphere will be apt for gaining the competitive edge. Declaring the marketing, the operational best practices must be retained and implemented throughout in order to make competitive advantage successful.

The organisation in order to maintain the sustainable journey can arrange regular development programme regarding waste management and carry out regular disposal system. Allowing collaborative financing would help to develop the community as a better place to live and amending pipelines and other issues would be easy if such social life can be maintained along with sharing resources together. This is how COLUA can protect competitive edge in its journey.

Although, COLUA, works towards developing both the economic and environmental sustainable business, human behaviour goes against the practice as conflict occurs while living in a shared place or people hamper the environmental balance by loitering garbage in an unpleasant manner. Increasing population and use of land areas for erecting high buildings are damaging the ecological balances. However, the future trends of increasing population and migration are initiating risks in terms of developing such sustainable student accommodation is questionable (Woolthuis et al., 2013). Due to increased population it can turn into biggest risk of such projects. In the course of maintaining ecological balance they are harming it somewhere in search of profit. However, profitability is something every business venture seeks for COLUA must come to one single point where both the social and business needs can be mitigated.

Customer segment and process of communication

An investor generally prefers to deal with known risk with low return rather than receiving higher returns being unaware of industry threats. In this case, it can be said as the number of students can be counted and the estimation of resources can be done as well, population issues will not affect the initiative intensely. Local tenants and accommodations providing the format of paying guests can try to alter their offerings to provide service within student friendly budget. Universities have a limited seat number with that risk and service areas can be estimated appropriately. Still, as discussed in Kitek Kuzman, Haviarova and Sandberg (2018), the authority cannot ignore private tenants where students want to live collaboratively with their favourable persons. Besides, other rental agencies and student accommodations are tough competitors for such housing service.

COLUA will be offering low cost rent and simple lifestyle in a safe environment to lead their student hood. It mitigates the student issues with unhygienic university accommodation and help them from living in a distant isolated place. However, the concept is new and it will take time to gain desired brand image.  Proper establishment can attract attention of students living in foreign countries as well. As described in Soria, Weiner and Lu (2014), students with generous background of income can afford this places easily and as the market is wide there is immense chances of profitability. Moreover, competition with the existing students’ accommodation is going to be prominent.

Considering the study of Frichot and Runting (2017), it can be stated that sustainable competitive advantage comes from strategic practices of companies which retains their competitive edge with the progression of time. In case of COLUA as well things are not different. COLUA has taken an initiative and in order to gain long term results it must be practiced through the right procedure. As internal practice, segmentation must be defined and the issues resolved by the product or service must be clearly interacted across the organisation and operational units. This advantage is significant in order to achieve long term goals. It can be protected by ensuring efficient employees and effective leaders who can ensure customers’ satisfaction as per prior promise.

Innovation is considered as one of the most important factor in terms of achieving a competitive advantage and so in case of COLUA too as it is a result of innovation within the sector of real estate. As described in Copiello and Bonifaci (2015), in a market where similar products and services are available, if some company comes up with some innovative idea for resolving ongoing issue within the industry; it is normal that target market will be more responsive.

Innovation is key aspect for gaining competitive advantage, and providing unique product and services to the consumers (Jajja et al., 2017). The company has used innovation to provide differentiated product in the market and even though there are substitute products available in the market, the company will be able to create their blue ocean. This means that they will cater to a completely different market segment where there are no competitors.

Growth potential and competitive edge: value proposition

Innovation for COLUA lies not only in developing innovative product but generating all round innovative co-living lifestyle (Cheng, Yang & Sheu, 2014). This means that in order to do so the organization needs to establish some ground rules and use technological superiority to enhance the ability of co sharing. The energy efficiency is the key feature of the project so technological innovation is required to develop an effective sustainability.

Local tenants and accommodations providing the format of paying guests can try to modify their structure and work on their business to provide service in student friendly budget. As discussed in Woolthuis et al. (2013), the areas surround Universities can be more occupied and congested intending to provide accommodations to students. However, due to the added risk mitigation and sustainability competencies COLUA’s capability of innovation can be major competitive advantage.

According to the situational analysis, internal risk is the maintenance. The housing authority is thinking to deliver a sustainable environment yet in the long run if the operations can be maintained efficiently only then the risks can be avoided.  

As external risk, the competitors’ threat can be identified. Existing student accommodation businesses has gained immense trust over students’ community. As described in Kitek Kuzman, Haviarova and Sandberg (2018), this concept of green housing is comparatively new and needs to develop its brand image. Students perceived it as expensive place to live, for that marketing department must be effective enough to circulate purpose of their agenda. Then expectation of mitigating the risk can be expected.

Conclusion

As issues can be avoided and growth potential is high; therefore, acknowledging the lower risk factors and growth potential investors will be interested to go forward with such a competitive and sustainable business idea.

References

Cheng, C. C., Yang, C. L., & Sheu, C. (2014). The link between eco-innovation and business performance: a Taiwanese industry context. Journal of Cleaner Production, 64, 81-90.

Copiello, S., & Bonifaci, P. (2015). Green housing: Toward a new energy efficiency paradox?. Cities, 49, 76-87.

Frichot, H., & Runting, H. (2017). In captivity: The real estate of co-living. In Architecture and Feminisms (pp. 140-149). Routledge.

Garg, M., Gupta, K., & Jha, R. (2014). An empirical study on market research of organized students’ housing industry in India. International Journal of ICT and Management, 2(2), 143-154.

Hoekstra, A. Y., & Wiedmann, T. O. (2014). Humanity’s unsustainable environmental footprint. Science, 344(6188), 1114-1117.

Jajja, M. S. S., Kannan, V. R., Brah, S. A., & Hassan, S. Z. (2017). Linkages between firm innovation strategy, suppliers, product innovation, and business performance: insights from resource dependence theory. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 37(8), 1054-1075.

Kitek Kuzman, M., Haviarova, E., & Sandberg, D. (2018). Collaborative housing for elderly: clever co-living concepts. In COST Action CA 16121, Tarragona, 16th March 2018 (pp. 51-54).

Ng, M. K. (2018). Sustainable community building in the face of state-led gentrification: the story of the Blue House cluster in Hong Kong. Town Planning Review, 89(5), 495-512.

Seyfang, G., Park, J. J., & Smith, A. (2013). A thousand flowers blooming? An examination of community energy in the UK. Energy Policy, 61, 977-989.

Soria, K. M., Weiner, B., & Lu, E. C. (2014). Financial decisions among undergraduate students from low-income and working-class social class backgrounds. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 44(1), 2.

Woolthuis, R. K., Hooimeijer, F., Bossink, B., Mulder, G., & Brouwer, J. (2013). Institutional entrepreneurship in sustainable urban development: Dutch successes as inspiration for transformation. Journal of Cleaner Production, 50, 91-100.

Wyatt, A. (2018). Home Sharing: An Important Housing Option for US Cities. Focus, 14(1), 19.