Shiva Lakshmanan

About

I trained to draw buildings. I stayed to get them built.

I’m Shiva. I studied architecture at NIT Trichy in the nineties, and somewhere between the drawing board and the site office I found I was just as curious about the second half of the story: how a line on paper becomes a place where people actually live.

So that’s the half I’ve worked on for more than 26 years. I’ve valued land, planned townships, built hospitals and run construction companies, first across India, then in West Africa, and now in Central Africa.

Today I’m a chief operating officer in Kinshasa, looking after real estate and construction across several sites. I still think like an architect. I just spend more of my day with schedules than with sketches.

Along the way I picked up an MBA, a taste for lean construction, and a habit of wondering whether software could take over the dull parts. That last one is why this site has a lab and a game in it.

The path so far

  1. 1992 to 1997, Trichy

    Learning to draw

    A degree in architecture from NIT Trichy, and the start of a lifelong habit of looking up at buildings.

  2. 2004 to 2006

    Learning the business

    An MBA in international business at the Asian Institute of Technology, with an exchange programme at IIM Bangalore.

  3. 2006 to 2010, Gurgaon

    Advising

    Four years as an associate director at a global property consultancy.

  4. 2010 to 2015, Chennai and Coimbatore

    Developing

    Vice-president roles with two developers, and a property venture I co-founded along the way.

  5. 2015 to 2024, Lagos

    Building

    Nearly nine years with a construction company in Nigeria, first as general manager, then as managing director. We delivered 42 large projects, about 7.35 million square feet in all, and came through the pandemic with the whole team still on board.

  6. 2024 to now, Kinshasa

    Operating

    Chief operating officer for a real estate and construction group, with projects of more than 5 million square feet and a workforce of around 5,000.

A few things I’ve helped build

  • Two 500-bed multi-specialty hospitals, one in Colombo and one in Dhaka.
  • A chain of eye hospitals, 10 to 50 beds each, across four cities in India.
  • An 800-acre integrated township in Coimbatore, along with an 18-acre estate for living and play and a 6-acre enclave of high-rise apartments.
  • Land valuation and project consultancy covering more than 75,000 acres across India.

What I’ve come to believe

Benchmarks are a starting point

On delivery speed, cost control and client satisfaction, I aim to beat the market, not match it.

Hard years shouldn’t cost people their jobs

I’ve led organisations through downturns and regulatory upheaval without losing the team.

Good teams travel well

Multidisciplinary teams can deliver lasting results anywhere, including emerging and volatile markets. I’ve built and scaled a few.

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