After floodwater undermined their West Auckland home, Rishi Buggaveeti and Sonika Ravula used the disruption as a catalyst to build Oasis Base Group into an organisation spanning property, investment and cross-border solutions.
When the Auckland Anniversary floods hit in January 2023, Rishi Buggaveeti and Sonika Ravula had just brought their newborn daughter home from hospital.
Within weeks, the West Auckland home they had expected to grow old in was gone, undermined by flood-damaged ground on the hillside beneath it.
For the husband-and-wife founders of Oasis Base Group, the loss was bewildering. But it crystallised a new ambition – to build a resilient, internationally connected business that combines property, design-led thinking and early-stage investment.
“We were comfortable – probably too comfortable,” says Buggaveeti. “Then this happened, and it completely changed things.”
The couple downsized, relocated to Wellington, and focused on the business they had started years earlier as a town-planning and landscape-architecture consultancy and expanded into land development in 2019.
Oasis Base Group evolved into a multi-sector enterprise spanning larger-scale subdivisions and developments under Oasis Base Property, and venture investment through Optional Gravity.
“We had two options,” Buggaveeti says. “We could try to find something else and carry on as we were, or go somewhere we thought we could actually grow further and start fresh.”
For Ravula, there was no carrying on as normal.
“I keep joking with Rishi that the house ejected us. It pushed us to our destiny.”
Complementary skills have shaped that destiny. Buggaveeti, a qualified town planner with a longstanding affinity for land, brings technical property expertise and financial discipline. Ravula who built and worked in India’s emerging startup ecosystem earlier in her career, brings brand, growth, marketing and investment perspective.
“He brings the drive, and I bring the purpose,” says Ravula. “Sometimes it’s a clash for us, but that balance is important.”
Building for resilience
The group’s property arm, Oasis Base Property, is the foundation of the business. It focuses on premium, lifestyle-oriented land developments in New Zealand, including projects in Wellington, Taupō, Palmerston North and the Kāpiti Coast.
Buggaveeti says the approach is deliberately selective. Instead of pursuing development at scale for its own sake, Oasis Base Property aims for manageable project timeframes and avoids becoming overexposed to a single local market.
“Our model focuses on sites below $5 million, with a target development timeframe of 12 months,” he says.
Its development decisions draw on Buggaveeti’s planning background. Flood risk, geotechnical conditions, soils, infrastructure and the local market all form part of the analysis. He may assess hundreds of sites before finding one that meets the group’s criteria.
The experience of losing their own home has given that discipline added meaning. Oasis Base Property seeks to build beyond minimum compliance requirements, with climate resilience and long-term liveability embedded in site selection, infrastructure and design.
“When we do projects, we seek to design beyond minimum compliance requirements, taking a more conservative approach to flood risk and climate resilience,” Buggaveeti says.
“It is not about making quick money and moving on.”
Buggaveeti wants to challenge the assumption that developers are disconnected from the people who ultimately live in their projects.
“Sometimes buyers from two or three years ago still get in touch,” he says. “I really like that.”
Beyond property
While property remains a New Zealand-focused business, Oasis Base Group’s broader ambitions are international.
Optional Gravity – the couple’s early-stage investment platform, founded and led by Ravula – reflects her thesis to work with founders at the intersection of technology, sustainability and scalable business models.
It holds select early-stage investments in companies including Wellumio, the Wellington-based brain imaging company; Goodmelts, a wellness-focused fragrance Indian brand; and QuantZen, a post-quantum cybersecurity firm based in UAE; along with several others.
The goal is not simply to invest capital, but to help promising businesses navigate cross-border growth.
Through connections across New Zealand, India, the United Arab Emirates and the wider Asia-Pacific region, the group sees an opportunity to help early-stage companies access new customers, networks and investment pathways.
Ravula sees particular potential in helping smaller New Zealand businesses look beyond the traditional pull of the United States.
India’s enormous and diverse consumer market, alongside the UAE’s role as a commercial and logistics hub, offers another route to international expansion.
“We are not trying to be a consultant that tells someone how to do it,” Buggaveeti says. “We want to believe in the business, invest in it, become an active partner and help it take the next step.”
Built to adapt
The couple’s global expansion has not been without further disruption. After establishing in Dubai, escalating conflict in the region created another period of uncertainty just as their family was settling in.
Again they adapted, using the opportunity to spend more time in India, where they have set up a venture studio in Hyderabad, while retaining the core business connections in New Zealand and the UAE.
The experience reinforced a lesson first learned after the floods: plans matter, but rigid plans can become a liability.
“We realised not to set really hard plans on where we need to be,” says Buggaveeti. “New Zealand, Dubai and India are three familiar places for us. We are happy wherever we are.”
For Ravula and Buggaveeti, that flexibility remains central to the Oasis Base Group story, though they remain firmly connected to New Zealand.
What began with a home lost to floodwaters has become a more expansive proposition, a platform built to endure change and help others find opportunity within it.
For more information visit Oasis Base Group - Driving progress with a purpose