Tata Groupe creates the world's cheapest home costing 500 Euros

In the western world our housing is of a high quality with multiple bedroom options, bungalows, detached, semis, flats, the choice is quite broad, and the cost can be anything from £60,000 to a million. What you buy depends on what you can afford.

In developing countries, there is no such choice and a home is what you can build yourself or share with others. In India, the slums even rely on asbestos roofing to keep them dry, even if it is slowly killing the people beneath it.

What such places require is affordable housing that is both clean and will last many years. Tata Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate, may have just come up with the solution by creating a 500 Euro home.

Tata Group has interests in technology, engineering, materials, energy, chemicals, and consumer products. It operates in 80 countries and consists of 114 companies. So you can see how pooling that expertise can bring about the solution to a problem as big as cheap housing.

The project has been put together by 15 people mainly working for Tata Steel's Indian and European operations. It consists of a 20-square-foot prefabricated structure that can be transported anywhere and constructed for the 500 Euro price. A larger 700 Euro house is also going to be made available.

Although there are no images of the cheap housing yet, Tata expects to have it available to buy within 8 months at which point they should start popping up all over the world.

As well as being a cheap, safe form of housing, the materials used for the doors and windows can vary, meaning there's also an opportunity for local recycling to occur in support of these homes.

Source: Tata Group