Sheeba Kanwar while telling me about the experiences of Green Valley resident welfare association kept mentioning Nina Sharma's name. I asked her about Nina. She said, Nina was associated with marketing department of Star line. She was in constant touch with owners of Green Valley right from beginning. Her job was to set up meeting with prospective buyers and persuade them to turn into potential buyers. Many owners bought their apartments after Nina's articulate pitch for the condominium. I asked for Nina's number.

I called up Nina on a Monday afternoon to beg her for an appointment. A husky voice answered the phone. The voice was polished, articulate and carried a distinct British accent. I mentioned Sheeba's name and told her what am I doing and asked her for interview. She agreed. The meeting were to take place at a restaurant in South Extension at around three in the afternoon.

Later that evening she called me again to cancel the meeting. She said, she would call me again. The call never came. I waited for a day before calling her. This time she told me meet her in Gurgaon at a construction site [it was a new project comprising of a golf course surrounding with fifty villas] in two hours. I told her that would be difficult as it would take me at least three hours to reach Gurgaon. She said she would call me later in the evening to fix up a meeting. Next morning she called and asked me to meet her at Saket.

I reached Saket at two o clock. Nina came in fifteen minutes later. Nina's husband is with the Indian Army. They have been living here for last five years, she wanted to pursue a career, so she went to Titan Tobacco corporation for a job in marketing. Titan had just set up Star Line then, she was asked to meet the director of Star line and within a week of joining Titan she began selling apartments to interested clients. He first project was Green Valley , initially she held a number of meetings with people working on the project. Where they decided upon the ideal client, who to pitch the project to, how it should be pitched, what should be told to potential clients -about the project etc.

Some aspects about pitching the project became clear. Security-which is to be technology driven, professional, outsourced and round the clock was to be the main feature, profile of a potential client was marked as corporate, upper management and preferably related to finance, a one time maintenance fee was to be charged from each apartment dweller, some apartment were reserved for high politicians who might be interested, and apartments were only to be leased, rented out to people who confirm the profile of an ideal client.

The other area where she contributed was in compiling the zoning laws for the complex. For that she did extensive research. She leafed through, read, took notes, referred, added, made changes to and got ideas from numerous zoning law brochures from Singapore, Australia and the US. She realized that the idea of status, grade, class, merit, quality, eminence can only be bought through in a condominium complex by putting conditions to acceptable behavior. She compiled laws that were common to foreign condos and added some more to suit local practices.

Her stint at Star line gave her an opportunity to meet a make friends with a lot of people with power and money. She left the firm in two years and started her own real estate consultancy. She works closely with Rahul Jain who has left Starline to build his own real estate empire.

These days she is working on a heritage project solely of businessmen and industrialists. In the pipeline are projects for managers with the IT industry, non resident Indian professionals and one exclusively for risk and security analysts.