A Slice Of The High Life

Indian uhnwis have poured billions of dollars into london and dubai's real estate. We offer the most recent insider view to the two world cities currently struggling to find their feet.

THERE is a class of mega-rich in India that is more likely to run into their well-heeled counterparts in Mayfair than on Malabar Hill during the summer, or Dubai’s exclusive Palm Jumeirah, than in the tony neighborhoods of South Delhi when the winter chill sets in.

From business tycoons, cricketing legends and Bollywood A-listers to erstwhile royalty and the nouveau riche who’ve made their money in the country’s liberalized new economy, the cream of India’s crop have courted London, and more recently Dubai, for a variety of reasons – to see and be seen, to beat the blazing summer’s heat, or to sway to Dubai’s gentle spring-like winter breeze, for the love of British public schools, or an intrepid shopping spree, as hubs for their business empires, or to mark their ‘arrival’ in life. The rich have, over the years, spent millions on heirloom properties or second homes in these cities.

The love affair is not really new. Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur famously went on a shopping trip to Harrod’s by herself, as a toddler, nearly a century ago. In the sixties, the Chellarams and Hindujas sent society pages into a tizzy with their large mansions and chauffeur-driven limousines. In more recent times, it was steel czar Lakshmi Mittal who grabbed headlines for setting foot on Billionaires Row in Kensington Palace Gardens, where he snapped up a 12-bedroom home that was said to be the world’s most expensive house at that time.