The DLF Man!

-

100 Cr. flat sold in Gurgaon.

DLF sells 1100 flats for 7200 Crs.


DLF made Gurgaon or Gurgaon made DLF?

The story of consistent hard work over 30 years combined with some good coincidences.

Yes, DLF is DLF not because of its political connections only, it's much more than that.


Not only Cybercity, DLF - Founded by Chaudhary Raghvendra Singh, established famous colonies in the 1950s-60s like Rajouri Garden, Model Town, Greater Kailash, Hauz Khas, etc. 

Chaudhary thought of establishing real estate to provide accommodation to millions of families displaced by partition who settled in the capital.


Fast forward to the year 1957, which came as a shock when the Delhi Development Act of 1957 gave control to the government over the real estate development in the city.

The company's control was also transferred to Chaudhary's son-in-law - K.P. Singh - The visionary behind present-day DLF.


Now to survive, sustain and grow, they had to diversify, they did it by investing in Motor and battery manufacturing but it didn't go well and returned to their original business by the 80s.


K.P. Singh visioned the city of the future, along with the expansion of Delhi Airport on the Delhi-Haryana border, and along with Delhi-Jaipur Highway, establish a world-class city of the future.


Links with the Gandhis and Congress:- (and yes its not wadra connection)


The biggest coincidence - "DLF owner K P Singh gives Rajiv Gandhi all the credit for reviving DLF and enabling him to create Gurgaon as an international city." - One afternoon Rajiv Gandhi's car stopped in the barren land of Gurgaon ahead of KP Singh to get some water for his car's engine, where KP Singh shared his vision about Gurgaon. Rajiv got impressed and arranged a long meeting with him about his vision and plans to achieve the same.


Land Acquisition:-

The hardest part of a real estate project is land acquisition, in this case from farmers who are emotionally attached to their land. To solve this, DLF promised to solve farmers' problems like better education, and healthcare,  arranging better and more productive land nearby. They did go from buying first plot in Chakkarpur to owning 556 Acres within a short span of time.


Finance:-

In the early 80s and 90s, there was nothing like home loan finance, or finance for setting up private businesses. 

DLF asked the farmers to become investors by investing back the amount of money they got promising return as soon as the company became profitable.

Also, the company took loans at even 24% from NBFCs to acquire more and more land as it was available at very cheap prices.


Political hurdles:-

Bansi Lal, the then CM of Haryana, was the biggest hurdle - from canceling their development licenses, acquiring land around Gurgaon, and even trying to arrest KP Singh. Bansi Lal did all in his power to destroy DLF. But KP Singh's persistence!!


BPO:-

Building high-rise buildings and commercial and residential real estate looks good but if not put to use becomes Ghost houses. To make the city of the future, it required more than that. 

KP Singh and his persistence again - He brought BPO to India by convincing GE's chairman Jack Welsh. From arranging dinners with ministers and maharajas of Rajasthan to showing him New India's potential, he was successful in convincing GE to Outsource to India which gave birth to Genpact in Gurgaon. From an Initial order of ~$10Mn to now doing business worth Billions.


It's all about some coincidences combined with the Persistence of the DLF man - Kushal Pal Singh and the rest is HISTORY. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IPO Frenzy: A Hidden Leading Indicator?

-
Image
 An IPO boom is seen as market's positive sentiment. News outlets and influencers flood us with stories of high listing gains from IPOs. We often confuse it with the whole market going green forward. But data tells a different story: 1. IPOs squeeze liquidity from market - Listings, either primary or secondary, put money in the hands of company for expansion or the shareholders; leading to a cash outflow from the secondary market. 2. Correlation - I analyzed the last 18 years (2007-2024) of Nifty 50 returns against the annual number of IPOs and amount of Capital Raised. The statistical correlation between them: Nifty 50 returns against the annual number of IPOs +0.12 Nifty 50 returns against the Amount of Capital Raised +0.09 A correlation of +0.12 and +0.09 indicates a very weak positive relationship. In simple terms, knowing the Nifty's return for a year gives you almost no ability to predict the number of IPOs. But this gets interesting when we try to predict the Nifty's...
Read more

Middle East Crisis - Oil or something else?

-
Image
Next time you hear about conflicts or gas pipe shutdowns in the middle east, remember, it’s not just about your car or electricity bill — it’s about the food on your plate, and millions of Indian farmers. Whenever we talk about tensions in the Middle East, everyone immediately jumps to oil and logistical disturbances. But here's the twist — it's fertilizers that we need to start worrying about. And for India, it's a big deal. Here's how it connects The Middle East isn't just about oil; it’s also a fertilizer powerhouse, especially for nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea (made from natural gas). Now with conflicts disrupting natural gas supply (especially after recent tensions involving Israel, Iran, and Egypt), fertilizer plants in the Middle East have shut down. That’s squeezed the global supply — and prices are already rising. (Refer Image) We are the second-highest fertilizer consumer in the world. And for some more than half of it is imported. For some types —...
Read more

TikTok, Trump, and the World’s Weirdest Love Triangle

-
Image
A national weapon. A national threat. A political strategy. The Tiktok-Trump saga is an epic case of how a naive start-up became the epitome of geo-political tug-of-war between world's 2 biggest powers. That start-up marked a turning point in how we consume content globally. ByteDance (parent of Tiktok) founded in 2012, launched a short video app - "Douyin" for Chinese market in 2016. The app named as TikTok for international market was launched in 2017. In 2018, it was among the most downloaded app. The growth was immense, establishing it among the top social media platforms. Here are some key stats that frame the power of social media in today’s world: - 5.24 billion people (63.9% of the global population) currently use social media worldwide, up more than double from 2.07 billion in 2015 - The average social media user engages with an average of 6.83 various social media platforms - Globally, the average time a person spends on social media a day is 2 hours 21 minutes ...
Read more