An artist’s impression of the Xanadu complex coming up in Rajarhat

If you have just been transferred to the city on your first assignment and are on the lookout for a place to stay, nothing too expensive or big but close to your place of work, the answer may lie in a studio apartment.

Studio apartments are self-contained and small apartments, which combine living room, bedroom and kitchenette into a single unit.

At a time infotech companies are looking at building residential campuses and the walk-to-work concept catching on in the service sector, studio apartments at affordable prices are catching on.

Unlike service apartments, the studio segment — often called bachelor apartments — are smaller, ranging between 500 and 700sqft and come at much lower rates than regular flats.

“Concepts like walk-to-work were the reason we are executing a project of studio apartments. Our studio apartments will offer customers high-income-group benefits at middle-income-group prices. We are looking at people from IT and other service sectors like telecom who have started on their career path and would like to acquire an asset but which is not too expensive.

“These flats from Rs 12.5 lakh onwards provide the ideal option with all the facilities of a modern housing complex. The difference with service apartments is that customers will be able to own these studio apartments,” said Sanjay Jain, managing director, Siddha Group.

Apart from basic facilities like a laundromat, round-the-clock house-keeping services, a 24-hour coffee shop and a convenience store, the project will have a touch-screen security system.

A concierge will be in attendance 24x7 and will help with odd jobs ranging from finalising travel plans to organising meals at any hour. An icemaker will be available at the end of every corridor. The project will have a miniplex, a lounge bar and a splash pool — all available to owners at no extra cost.

Siddha Group is building 315 such studio apartments in New Town Rajarhat in the first phase and another 150 apartments in the second phase in Calcutta. The project is called Xanadu, a name borrowed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan.

Studio and service apartments are available in other cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Gurgaon, especially where IT and ITeS companies have struck deep roots. Globally, such apartments also cater to the retired population as big apartments are cumbersome to maintain.

“Need-based facilities such as studio apartments are signs of a maturing market. The value additions will be enhanced as the market witnesses more competition. In other cities, the speculative market had pushed up real estate prices unreasonably at times but in Calcutta, the situation was not that bad. As a result, the demand-supply mismatch did not take place. Therefore, such niche demand will create its own niche market,” said Abhijit Das, the regional director of consultants Trammell Crow Meghraj.

Companies are also offering a contractual or verbal agreement to help buyers find tenants later.

IT companies also seem interested in these projects as the nature of job often involves travel at a time hotel rates are rising and there is a scarcity of rooms.

“This will be a good option for IT and ITeS employees, especially those who have just embarked on their career. The companies will also be interested in buying blocks of such apartments to cater to their visiting employees. It becomes very difficult for us to cater to employees as well as overseas clients during the peak season,” said Kalyan Kar, managing director, Acclaris, a BPO company in the city.

Kar agreed that as IT employees travel and get transferred frequently on project work, the clause on finding tenants as part of the agreement would be an added advantage.

So go ahead, you need not be an artist to get your own studio.