Chennai’s geography and its coastline are both a gift and a gamble. The conflict is a lived experience that resurfaces each year when the streets flood, cyclones reshape neighbourhoods, and the search for safe housing grows urgent.
Much like a push back at the shore, these waves carry an unspoken urgency that the residents recognise only when daily life is disrupted. More than two decades on, the impact of the 2004 tsunami continues to shape conversations around housing and rehabilitation. “After the 2004 tsunami, it took the government several years to roll out housing schemes and complete construction. There was a large gap between immediate relief and long-term rehabilitation,” observe the founding members of Modulus Housing, a company that reimagines construction through innovative modular solutions.
Its members, Shreeram Ravichandran, Gobinath P, and Jawahar Rajasekar, alumni of IIT Madras, came together on the ground in 2016 when Cyclone Vardah hit Chennai. The team notes, “Like many students, we were involved in relief work. While doing that, a question kept coming up for us: what happens to people who have spent years, sometimes decades, building their homes and have lost everything overnight?” As days turned into nights and nights into days, the city returned to its routine. However, they examined past disasters and housing responses. For them, one thing became very clear: “When shelter is lost, rebuilding permanent housing takes a long time,” and there needs to be a process in place to find a home, though temporarily, until a decision is made.
With this gap at its core, the idea of modular housing — a method where homes are built in modules or sections within a controlled factory setting and then transported to its permanent site for assembling — was born. “We felt there had to be a faster, temporary-to-semi-permanent solution that could be deployed quickly, without waiting for years of conventional construction to catch up,” they note.
Flood to foundation
As students, the trio began working on this idea mostly as a prototype-driven exercise. In 2019, they formally incorporated the company. By then, their thinking had also evolved further. “We realised that the rural and low-rise construction across India faces very similar issues: lack of skilled labour, inconsistent material quality, logistical difficulties, and long timelines. In many ways, rural construction behaves like a permanent post-disaster environment.”
Hence, instead of focusing only on disaster relief, the engineers decided to work on improving how low-rise and rural buildings are designed, manufactured, and delivered. “The mission became broader: to make high-quality, fast, and reliable construction accessible for everyday buildings, not just during emergencies,” they explain.
The path forward was not linear, but shaped by constant learning and reflection at every step. Their biggest challenge was translating a novel modular construction concept into a dependable operating system. “Construction is unforgiving. Innovation only matters if it shows up on site, on time, and at scale. Building repeatability across design, manufacturing, supply chain, and execution, while working across multiple states and stakeholders, required deep operational discipline,” says Gobinath, co-founder and COO.
The approach to their problems was simple: making steady decisions around quality, people, and financial discipline, especially while scaling. “The decisions are always filtered through cost, supply chains, local capabilities, and timelines. If something cannot be built reliably on the ground, it doesn’t matter how good it looks on paper. The balance comes from designing systems that work within real constraints rather than fighting them,” explains Shreeram, co-founder and CEO.
This gained knowledge was implemented in their work and is now rewarded by the trio’s entry in the Forbes India 30 under 30 2026 list, under the category social impact. The founders say, “It felt like a good acknowledgment of the years of work and long hours behind the scenes. At the same time, we see it less as recognition for the three of us and more as recognition for the entire ecosystem around Modulus — the team, partners, fabricators, site engineers, workers, and customers who have been a part of the journey and believed in us.”
Unseen backstage work
For this recognition to be possible in under six years of the company’s inception, it required a great deal of trial and error, perseverance, and a strong need to prove their purpose. Gobinath says, “The idea that we’d build over a thousand buildings, stay profitable for years, and work with governments, global institutions, and large enterprises would have felt very distant.”
As H Jackson Brown Jr. once said, “Don’t work for recognition, but do work worthy of recognition”, the team took up projects that focused on schools, rural clinics, agri infrastructure, and worker housing. These projects helped them measure tangible impact in a doctor being able to work from a hygienic rural clinic; a child studying in a school that is safe and well-built; a farmer running a dairy or agri facility that meets the same safety and quality standards as a large commercial plant. “If good engineering can reduce time, cost, and uncertainty for people who typically build and live in low-rise buildings — currently the most overlooked and weakest link of infrastructure — that is an impact for us,” they say.
The hours they silently put into studying the root cause and providing sustainable solutions did not go unnoticed. Their impact on the ground spoke for itself. During COVID, Modulus Housing partnered with governments of various Indian states and institutions to deploy healthcare infrastructure quickly across the country. “It reinforced that buildings could be delivered with speed and reliability,” the team points out.
While this was a major highlight towards achieving their vision — making infrastructure fast, affordable, and accessible, using technology-driven, sustainable, and modular solutions — two ground-level moments made their mission feel profoundly real, delivering life-changing shelters against all odds. The Meghalaya milestone, where the team executed 100 cabins in remote, rain-soaked interiors, where conventional builds fail due to heavy annual rainfall. “Locals’ joy in receiving durable homes was pure validation,” notes Jawahar, head of operations. Another one was the Malawi, Africa breakthrough. Modulus Housing shipped cabins from India to flood-hit areas with no electricity, replacing huts and straw homes. “These instances reinforced why we do this work: transforming lives, one rapid build at a time,” he adds.
Beyond boardrooms
Having already accomplished the distant dream of working with governments and institutions across the peninsula, this Forbes recognition comes with “a layer of credibility, especially in initial conversations with partners and funders,” says Gobinath. Shreeram adds, “It has increased trust, but also scrutiny. Clients and government bodies expect consistency, and internally it has raised the bar on how seriously we hold ourselves accountable.”
For the team, the real challenge is to use this platform responsibly, to push for higher execution standards and ethical practices across the ecosystem, not just within our company. “And if this recognition helps policy makers, institutions, and global partners take productised, factory-built construction seriously for everyday infrastructure, then it would be an amazing thing that could happen due to this recognition,” the company hopes.
Rejecting the steady-income path their peers took and betting on building something transformative, “This milestone affirms that bold, unconventional decisions drive real impact,” concludes Jawahar.
Notable milestones of the company over the years leading to Forbes recognition
1. Started with developing initial prototypes to prove modular housing concept.
2. Secured bulk orders during COVID-19, ramping up production under intense pressure.
3. Scaled operations to deliver across 24 states simultaneously.
4. Innovated products that enable 4-hour close-outs, revolutionising speed-to-market.
5. Expanded rigorously state-by-state, building a pan-India footprint.
6. Pioneered Ground to G+3 (ground plus three floors) structures, pushing technical boundaries.
7. Grew the team from 6 to 60 people, fostering a high-performance culture.
8. Built a diverse product portfolio to meet evolving market needs.
9. Onboarded 100+ subcontractors across India for seamless supply chain execution.
10. Extended reach to Africa, marking our first international milestone.