Luxury Indian Ocean No1 Édition 2014 | Page 24

Were you motivated by money? No, but I have realised that, if you want to succeed in this business, you have to be able to put up the money for it. Real estate means starting from scratch, looking after administrative details, engaging an architect, doing a market study, understanding what people want and how much money they have, defining the project and finding the money to finance it. It’s rather like conducting a symphony orchestra―perhaps it sounds a bit romantic, put like that, but it’s a job in which money plays an important role but with the final goal of selling a house or apartment to a family whose dream it fulfils. 24 Luxury Mauritius “ You are a property developer. How did you begin your career? I am a self-made man. I completed my schooling but without taking the Baccalaureate exams. I was lucky to belong to a middle-class Franco-American family, cultured but extremely hard up! My mother was a militant feminist- she was vice-president of the Italian feminist movement―and my father did the dubbing for a film company. If he had a good year, we went on holiday to the Cap d’Antibes, otherwise we stayed at home! At 18, I lived in a maid’s room in Paris on the 7th floor of a building without a lift. I started work in a real estate agency and fell in love with the job. Four years later, I became commercial director of a large company and, a further seven years on, I started my own business. I had understood by then that real estate is not about property but about money. Mauritius must remain elitist without being a ghetto for the rich. So it’s not just a question of money, but also the desire to make people happy? Both. When I was young I enjoyed a wonderfully unstable life with my parents who were rosy-eyed intellectuals. But the best way to make a family happy is by offering it a roof over its head, as cheaply as possible. By solving the accommodation problem, you solve the problem facing all families. In other words, this family instability was what influenced your choice of career? Absolutely. It made me want something substantial. At 24, I bought an apartment―it was tiny but it gave me a feeling of security. In the 1970s and 1980s, that is what people looked for. When I sold a property, I could completely understand the people in front of me. How can you have a happy life and bring up your children properly unless you solve the problem of having a place to call your own? For me this is fundamental. I would never have been able to work in banking or insurance. What has always interested me is the idea of selling something we all need. I didn’t do my job for the money, but it happens that to do it properly you have to think like a financier.