In 2002, Rohan Marwaha made a life-changing decision to move from London to Dubai. Marwaha was in search of a project he could build from the ground up, something toward which he could direct his passion and drive. Shortly after arriving in Dubai, Marwaha was asked by his boss at the time if he wanted to be part of a new project serving the growing area real estate industry called Cityscape. He knew that this was the opportunity he had been waiting for, and would be transformative for his career.
As managing director of Cityscape, Rohan Marwaha has transformed the Cityscape brand into one of the world's leading real estate events, comprised of a series of exhibitions, conferences and seminars spanning across the globe. In just six years, Marwaha turned Cityscape Dubai into the world's largest real estate event, with over 52,000 senior real estate professionals in attendance from 136 countries. Marwaha describes the phenomenon of Dubai as something that no one could have predicted, "The emergence of the capital of the Middle East and one of the most successful real estate stories of this century." Marwaha has channeled the overwhelming success of Cityscape Dubai into events in new emerging markets around the world, including Cityscape USA, the Cityscape brand's first-ever conference and exhibition in the U.S. taking place in New York City, at the Javits Center September 9-12.
"Cityscape USA 2008 will be a showcase for unparalleled investment opportunities in emerging real estate markets namely India, China, Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Latin America. It will also be an opportunity for the New York and U.S. real estate industries to network with some of the most significant real estate investors and developers from the emerging world and to attract investment into New York and U.S. real estate assets, projects and vehicles," Marwaha said.
Cityscape is a wholly owned brand of Informa plc, one of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.K., valued at $4 billion, and employing 10,000 people around the globe. In 2005 Informa decided to take the Cityscape brand global and tackle new emerging markets. After two years of extensive research, Cityscape announced five new events: Cityscape China, Cityscape India, Cityscape Asia, Cityscape Abu Dhabi and Cityscape Latin America.
In 2007, Informa took another big step. "While we continued to provide platforms - exhibitions, conferences, seminars - where information exchange could occur, we decided to become a provider of real estate information ourselves," said Marwaha. Cityscape magazine opened that year, quickly becoming the leading source of information on emerging real estate markets. The brand then launched an online subscription-based service for the real estate industry called Cityscape Intelligence.
Currently, Marwaha is working on the launch of the Cityscape Executive Search. "We have identified a very real need for organizations that have expanded into emerging markets to find qualified leaders and personnel. This service, to be launched later this year, will seek to fill that gap with our global network," said Marwaha about the project.
Marwaha keeps an intense travel schedule. He is gone two to three weeks every month meeting with teams in cities including New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Mumbai and Sao Paulo. Through his travels, Marwaha has been able to learn the fundamentals and drivers in each emerging market. "The value of relationships, cultural sensitivities, politics, legal infrastructure, government involvement are just some of the factors that affect real estate businesses from country to country and the value of each needs to be determined and tackled with a different approach," he said of the international scope of his work.
Launching new events can be a grueling process. The launch of Cityscape India took Marwaha 14 trips within four months to various different cities in India. Extensive meetings with senior management in Indian real estate development and investment companies was the only way he could gain a true understanding of the market. "During this period I successfully mastered the art of sleeping in a car between meetings. It was the only way I could survive the jet lag and lack of sleep I was getting," said Marwaha.
Marwaha's upbringing has also given him a diverse cultural experience. Born to Indian parents they raised him in London, a city with strong international cultures. There Marwaha achieved a scholarship to one of the top grammar schools when he was 11. After graduating, he went on to the University of Greenwich, where he studied business and marketing. "Many people I meet usually say how they never use the skills they learned at University. This most certainly does not apply to me. The skills I learned at university have really helped me to launch all the various products for Cityscape," said Marwaha.
Marwaha got married last year in Dubai. He describes the ceremony as a "fantastic mix of my family who are Indian, my closest friends who are English and my wife's Australian family." The wedding consisted of an entire week of celebrations. Every evening had a different theme including an Australian BBQ, a pub-crawl, and a night of Indian festivities. "My wife is the most amazing person I have ever met. She keeps me grounded, supports me tirelessly, and motivates me to be the best I can be; and then still manages to look beautiful every morning!" he said.
Marwaha believes strongly in giving back to the global community. He developed an initiative for Cityscape to support charitable organizations and initiatives around the world. At each real estate event Cityscape offers free exhibition space and ready built stands to non-profit organizations looking to help impoverished countries through projects including building schools and low cost housing.
Rohan has a strong vision for the future of the Cityscape brand. He predicts that the brand will become the most recognizable real estate services provider in the world. He points towards Informa's global resources and information as an invaluable catalyst for Cityscape's growth.
"Our vision is to facilitate investment into real estate projects and vehicles globally. Events, intelligence, recruitment, research are just some of the ways we currently do that. The challenge now is to gain more penetration into two of the biggest markets: US and Europe. Once we achieve this we can look to expand again into other new product areas."
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