Word: singhs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Singh doesn't see it that way. "Urban development in India ... will be the biggest sunrise industry that any country has seen in any part of the world," he says. The trend is being driven by macro forces. As the country becomes richer and more urban (the number of people living in cities will rise to 461 million by 2025, from 286 million today, according to the Asian Development Bank), demand for housing should go right on booming...
That was when the driver of an overheating four-wheel drive stopped to request some water. The supplicant was Rajiv Gandhi, son of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and soon to be India's leader himself. "Rajiv Gandhi was like a ray of hope for India," says Singh. "We found that we were on the same wavelength very quickly." He was later repaid for his water when Gandhi pushed the Haryana government to ease the commercial-development restrictions. Their two-hour conversation that day, says Singh, was "the birth of the entire urban-development policy of India today...
...India's first modern commercial structures, including offices for General Electric, Swedish cell-phone maker Ericsson and Swiss food giant Nestlé. The company also built luxury apartments and houses, including a residential estate incorporating an 18-hole golf course designed by golfing legend Arnold Palmer. Land that cost Singh as little as $65 an acre now sells for about $4 million an acre. In the run-up to its IPO, DLF has been on another buying spree and now has holdings in 31 cities...
Over the past few years, Singh has handed over much of the day-to-day running of DLF to his son Rajiv, 48, who studied engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Daughter Pia, 36, a Wharton economics graduate, runs the retail business. Older sister Renuka handles some international business. Singh says he plans to slowly step away from DLF to concentrate on his golf (handicap: 14), collect more art (DLF owns one of the biggest private collections in the country) and travel (he is the honorary consul general of Monaco and vacations in London...
...does Singh, who laments that in its first 60 years, India's philosophy was to "think small, make small buildings and never to think that we could make bigger things, better things." He pauses, looking old when he stops, but animated and younger as soon as he begins talking again. "I ask you, Why can't we be excellent...