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India’s richest tycoons are creating a new “billionaires’ row” on a single street in Mumbai, piling wealth into developments in a seafront district transformed by the city’s infrastructure boom.
Billionaires such as banker Uday Kotak and pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Dilip Shanghvi have bought properties on Worli Sea Face, wooed by sea views and decent transport connections after the construction of a $1.5bn coastal road. The one-time industrial heartland already counts among its residents Isha Ambani, the daughter of Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man.
For India’s wealthiest, “Worli Sea Face today is the place to be”, said Gulam Zia, a senior executive director with property consultant Knight Frank.
Naman Xana tower, built on the site of a dilapidated bungalow that had been empty for decades, epitomises the transformation of the area into one of the city’s most desirable abodes.
Four of India’s richest families have bought at least seven of the 16 apartments in the 24-storey building, said Jayesh Shah, chair of the Shree Naman Group, an assertion backed up by land sale records seen by the Financial Times, real estate agents and local media reports.
Pharmaceutical tycoon Leena Gandhi Tewari, chair of USV pharmaceuticals, bought two apartments for nearly $75mn, Shah said. Dilip Shanghvi’s wife Vibha has bought two apartments in the building and Tanya Dubash, executive director at her family conglomerate, Godrej Group has bought a duplex in the tower. Barnsley football club owner Neerav Parekh also owns two apartments there.
“The rich want a good community,” said Shah, adding that “the ultra-rich only want exclusivity and privacy”. Each floor has 6,000 square feet and views of the Arabian Sea. He said another eight apartments had been sold, but did not say to whom.
India has nearly 200 billionaires, according to 360 One, a top wealth management company, and a third of them live in Mumbai. A flood of initial public offerings in one of the world’s most buoyant equity markets has increased the ranks of wealthy buyers, boosting the high-end property market.
This has helped make Worli Sea Face the most coveted stretch of real estate in the country’s premium market.
Banking billionaire Kotak has paid more than $80mn in total for two neighbouring properties on the Worli Sea Face — a bungalow he bought in 2018 and the adjacent apartment building this year. Work is under way on the bungalow, and he intends to demolish the second building to expand his own home, according to two people aware of his plans.
“We did this presentation to him [Uday Kotak], calling it the emerging billionaires row,” Zia said. “We could see that, because of the coastal road coming in, Worli could get its due position in the market.”
Cyril Shroff, head of India’s largest law firm, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, and father-in-law to Gautam Adani’s son Karan, is redeveloping his property on Worli Sea Face.
Worli, once home to the cotton mills that were the city’s economic backbone and more recently to office complexes, is at the heart of a redevelopment that began more than two decades ago and includes metros, an airport and a seaport.
The biggest names in Indian business are involved. Ambani’s Reliance group has promised to develop a series of parks along the stretch of the coastal road, including promenades, cycling tracks and other public spaces. A road will connect them to an airport, built by the Adani group, on the city’s outskirts.
A new road network, which converges on Worli, is almost complete after a decade.
“With major infrastructure projects under way and limited new supply, we expect prices to see steady growth,” said Arvind Nandna, managing director of research and consulting at Savills’ India arm.
For India’s rich, “aspirationally, the house comes first”, said Shah of the Shree Naman Group. “Then the next thing is they’ll buy private jets and they’ll buy yachts and blah, blah, blah. But this is priority.”
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