Ondřej Prucha: how a developer built a 15-billion-crown company

In just three years, a new major player has emerged on the Czech real estate market — Svoboda & Prucha, founded by Martin Svoboda and Ondřej Prucha. Today their portfolio holds projects worth 15 billion crowns, and their ambition is to break into the top three developers in Prague and Brno within the next three years.

The 37-year-old Prucha admits he learned a great deal during nearly six years at a German retail corporation, where he was responsible for building new shopping centres. It was there that he mastered project management, reporting and investor communication — skills that later proved decisive.

The turning point for him came in 2019, when he joined the development group JRD, then headed by Martin Svoboda. Over three years, Prucha went from preparing deals to handing over finished properties to clients, coordinating teams and budgets, and negotiating with authorities over changes to zoning plans. He was then dismissed, however — on the grounds that he treated the projects as if they were his own.

“I realised I had an entrepreneurial mindset that didn't match the owners' strategy for the company,” Prucha recalls. Notably, Martin Svoboda left JRD at around the same time — the former colleagues promptly founded their own firm together.

The founders were soon joined by another former colleague, Pavel Fridrišek, who became technical director and partner. Today the team numbers 25 people, while architects, urban planners and lawyers are brought in on an outsourced basis, keeping the structure small and flexible.

Svoboda & Prucha's portfolio rests on three pillars: retail properties across Czechia, social infrastructure and, above all, residential projects — up to entire neighbourhoods. The company is completing a complex in Kosmonosy near Mladá Boleslav and preparing the large BJ Land quarter in Brno, featuring a kindergarten, a retirement home and an Alzheimer's care centre.

In three years, the company has completed ten projects worth a combined 2 billion crowns, with an eleventh already valued at 3 billion, and it is close to acquiring three more plots for projects worth 10 billion crowns. In the near term, Svoboda & Prucha expects to earn around two billion crowns a year from apartment sales alone.