Origination · Before the gates
Land, made bankable.
India has presumptive title, not conclusive title. Every parcel is a set of records that point at ownership without proving it, and institutional capital cannot underwrite a pointer. Curing is the work that closes that gap: defect by defect, authority by authority, until the position exists in a form a committee can price. It happens before the gates, and it decides whether there is anything worth walking through them for.
01 · The distance
Paper against ground
A record is not a right, and a right is not yet an asset.
India's land records are largely computerised, and the state's own portals warn that their data cannot be used for legal purposes. Digitisation makes a record retrievable. It does not make it correct, and it does not make it complete: most districts still lack a map that shows current ownership on the ground. The country has distributed roughly 1.7 crore property cards under its titling drive and seen lending against them in the low thousands. That single ratio is the market's honest verdict: a record is not a bankable asset.
Most of the land that actually trades comes from individual holders, not from corporate books, which means the parcel institutional capital wants is almost always held in exactly the form institutional capital cannot buy. The distance between those two states is not crossed by optimism or by a broker's assurance. It is crossed by work, and the work has a fixed shape.
02 · The cure list
Six workstreams
Every defect belongs to one of six families, and each family has an authority.
- 01 The record, corrected Mutation entries brought level with the deeds, wrong names and stale successions cleared through the revenue office that owns the register. A mutation entry is a record, not a right, and we treat it accordingly. So should your committee.
- 02 The tenure, converted Agricultural land brought lawfully to its intended use under the state's current law, not the law the internet remembers. Maharashtra abolished its conversion permission at the end of 2025 and most published guidance has not noticed. We date every state-law statement we make, and name the amending Act.
- 03 The consents, collected Every signature the conveyance will need, mapped and obtained: coparceners including daughters, heirs of every deceased link, court permission where a minor's share sits in the chain. A power of attorney is not a title chain. We go back to the last registered conveyance and rebuild from there.
- 04 The ground, measured A fresh instrument survey closed against the cadastral sheet, excess and shortfall quantified, boundaries fixed, encroachment scheduled with photographs and dates. We survey before we price. A shortfall found after terms are agreed is not a surprise, it is a failure of sequence.
- 05 The charges, cleared Encumbrance certificates across every sub-district the land has ever fallen in, the security registry searched on the asset and on every seller, corporate charges satisfied on the record rather than in correspondence, statutory dues brought to nil and evidenced.
- 06 The disputes, resolved Court searches run on the names of all predecessors, not only the current holder, because litigation attaches to persons before it attaches to parcels. What can be withdrawn is withdrawn, what can be compromised is decreed, and what remains is named, dated and priced.
03 · The order of operations
Sequence is the craft
Cures have dependencies, and money respects them.
Capacity comes before conveyance: there is no point perfecting a deed the signatory had no right to sign. The survey comes before the price. The name searches come before the public notice, and the notice period runs while the revenue work proceeds, because the calendar is money and the workstreams that can run in parallel are made to.
Every cure lands in the file the moment it completes: certified at source, referenced, indexed. The position's data room begins on the first day of curing, not on the eve of a transaction, so that when capital eventually reads it, the file shows its own history. Land is a state subject and there is no national procedure, which is precisely why a disciplined method is worth owning. Every defect we cannot close, we name, date, quantify and hand over.
The question we ask of every workstream: what does this unblock, and what is waiting on it.
04 · The standard
Cure to a definition
A committee does not buy clean title. It buys a re-performable file.
Bankable has a definition, and it is not an adjective. It is an evidence pack a stranger could re-perform: every document certified from its source registry, never taken from the seller's folder; every search run by name as well as by parcel; possession verified on the ground, because the record will not tell you who is standing on the field.
- Identity
One parcel, one cadastral identity, one current extract matched to one map, and a fresh survey reconciling recorded extent with measured ground.
- Continuity
The chain of registered conveyances, thirty years at minimum, with every inheritance and partition traced to named heirs and the record of rights brought level with the deeds.
- Capacity
The answer to the only question that matters, asked our way: not who owns the land, but whose signatures make the conveyance unimpeachable. Then a schedule of those signatures, obtained or diarised.
- Liberty
No subsisting charge, no undisclosed lien, no pending proceeding that binds a transferee, evidenced across every registry that could hold one.
- Use
Tenure and zoning that match the intention, with the kill criteria cleared first: forest, scheduled area, religious endowment, ceiling and coastal restrictions checked before a rupee of curing is spent on a parcel they would void.
- The defect register
What could not be closed, held honestly: each residual defect with its status, its owner, its quantum and its route. Cured, mitigated, accepted or priced. Nothing waved through, nothing hidden in an annexure.
India's title insurers exclude losses from missing or incorrect government records. That exclusion is our scope of work.
05 · What the holder gains
The economics of curing
Uncured land is priced by the buyer's fear. Cured land is priced by its use.
Every open defect on a position is a discount in someone else's model, and the discount is always larger than the cure would have cost, because the buyer prices the uncertainty, not the work. A holder who cures before the market arrives sells a different asset: one that institutional counsel can sign, that a lender can charge, that a committee can take to its board without a caveat schedule longer than the term sheet.
The curing mandate is paid as professional fees for defined workstreams with defined deliverables. It stands apart from any introduction we may later make, and it stands on its own: a holder who cures with us owes us nothing further, and a position that never seeks capital is still worth holding in a form the law can defend.
06 · The boundary
Structural, not modest
We cure positions. We never hold them.
India's exchange-control law prohibits foreign investment in the business of dealing in land for profit, and the prohibition is the first sentence of how this practice is structured. The land layer stays Indian-held throughout. We take no position in any parcel, we buy nothing, we sell nothing, and our fee is for the cure, not the deal. Foreign capital, where it comes, enters at the development layer the rules were written for.
Two more lines, held just as firmly. Opinions on Indian title are given by Indian advocates, whom we instruct and marshal; our work is the diligence, the survey, the sequencing and the file. And where a defect cannot be closed, we say so in the register rather than in smaller type: we document the chain, close what can be closed, and price what cannot.
Enquiries
The practice answers.
128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX
The development practice is led by Tanishq Chauhan. Correspondence reaches the principal directly.
Tanishq Chauhan on LinkedIn, opens in a new tab
Or continue with