Having the time to ponder a big decision is a luxury. Reality is such that few have the power to delay an impending moment of truth. This is what property developer Girish Jhunjhnuwala learned when seeing how his children told the time. For a man who presided over a watch-manufacturing business, it was ominous. As if rehearsing scenes from the future, his children and their friends glanced at their mobile phones.
Jhunjhnuwala says watches are the only industry he knows where the Swiss have taken the technology back in time. 'So from quartz, where every second counts, they went back to mechanical watches.'
For Jhunjhnuwala, it was time to move on. 'It was the most difficult decision I ever had to make,' he says of the day he decided to close the factory on the mainland and focus on Hong Kong property.
It was 2003 and the timeworn adage of opportunity arising from crisis came into play as property prices fell with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. This was when boutique serviced apartment operator home2homes was born with the acquisition of buildings in Aberdeen and Central. Under the brand name Ovolo, the company tapped into a market not catered to by the plush hotels: the younger executive who wanted to be at the heart of Hong Kong.
Location is an oft-cited factor in property investment, but timing can be the hidden hand on which success is counted. 'It's not only about getting into the market at the right time,' says Jhunjhnuwala at his Pok Fu Lam home. 'Once the deal is signed, the next day our project manager is on site with builders to start renovation.'
The working day doesn't begin with a breakfast meeting or conference call. Instead it's a gym workout of cardio and yoga which prepares Jhunjhnuwala for the office, meetings and decisions that are less of a dilemma than having to abandon mass-scale watch manufacturing. Pressing matters of the day end with a moment family members have come to recognise.
