KP Singh: The city builder

Until he decided to revive DLF, KP, as his friends refer to him, was known as an easy-going, fun-loving young former army officer, who ran the thriving Qutab Stud Farm in Delhi, managed the India operations for US company Universal Electric, and enjoyed partying every evening with his wife Indira and their friends. “My father-in-law said I would not be able to do it. Real estate is a dirty business; he thought I was soft," says Singh.

His father-in-law, Chaudhary Raghvendra Singh, had been planning to sell DLF, which he started in 1946. It had had a good run developing residential colonies in Delhi, but land ceiling laws hit it hard, and by the mid-70s it had shrunk to a firm with little cash in hand, 30 acres of wasteland in Gurugram and one large building on Parliament Street in Delhi. Indira and her sister Prem didn’t want to sell their shares and asked Singh to find a way to save their inheritance. Laws kept private developers out of urban planning, but Singh saw that Delhi was expanding and would soon run out of space. Those 30 arid acres everyone considered “too far from Delhi" could be the start of something big. “I imagined myself creating a city. I started my life in a village, but for polo and for business I travelled to London, Chicago, and I saw what real cities were like," says Singh. “Not many understood my vision because no one imagined India could ever be the way it is today."

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Gurugram, home to small farmers and not yet zoned as “urban", was his playground, and he started with a plan for DLF City, which would integrate offices, homes, malls, hotels and special economic zones. Since the 1980s, DLF has built five phases in Gurugram, including DLF Cyberhub, and expanded to other cities. Among the properties DLF—with a current market cap of $25.8 billion—has developed in Gurugram are the ultra-luxury Camellias and Dahlia, with rates of up to ₹180,000 per sq. ft. Though DLF was listed publicly in 2007, about 74% is still held by the promoters, Singh’s family.

Much of Singh’s story is well documented—the early public-private partnerships to develop land, spending time with farmers to convince them to sell, the careful fostering of relationships with people at all levels from Cabinet ministers to office clerks. He’s contributed to this oeuvre himself with his recent memoir, Why the Heck Not? and his 2011 autobiography, Whatever the Odds, which focused on the business. “Why the Heck Not? is more about life itself, what I’ve learnt, the ups and downs, the peculiarities, how I dealt with my phases of my life, and putting those lessons down so it can be useful for someone else," he says. His is a complicated legacy and Singh revels in storytelling—he enjoys making himself the hero but there’s also a calibrated cadence to the stories. He’s comfortably aware of the unique vision that allowed him to imagine a city beyond Delhi in the 1980s when most people lived in bungalows and worked in government offices, yet admits that Gurugram hasn’t turned out as it should have due to a lack of planning that foregrounded people. He knows he’s more ambitious and driven than most, but quickly counters any statement that could been seen as hubris with “these are all lessons we can all learn". He’s aware of the role of serendipity in his life, but is equally certain that nothing can be achieved without hard work. He advocates grabbing any opportunity that comes one’s way yet insists one needs a personal code of ethics.

He attributes “50% of success in life" to building relationships, describing being amiable as a way of living and explaining that in business, it’s important to be likeable without being pliable. “The important thing is how to conduct yourself so that people like to be associated with you even when they are not agreeing with you."

He wasn’t born with “this pleasing personality"; it is a lesson from sports—hockey, tennis, football, riding, polo—where he learnt to win, lose and lead. “It was because I was good in riding and tennis that a chance came for a scholarship to UK. There, tennis and polo are high society games so you learn to move in those circles. Then I joined Army, where you learn to move with everyone… My late wife was also like this—very friendly, very warm and we were both together a likeable couple." He digresses into long stories about friendships with M.F. Husain, Natwar Singh, Kamal Nath, Rajiv Gandhi and a host of others, all bonds of give-and-take, never cultivated with a goal in mind. Haryana chief ministers with whom he had similarly close ties that helped create a conducive business environment included Bhajan Lal, Devi Lal, Om Prakash Chautala and Banarsi Das Gupta.

His relationships have been controversial too, most memorably the 2012 headlines when DLF was caught in allegations of dubious deals with companies promoted by then Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra. “Yes, there were many challenges—laws, changing land policies and zoning, you couldn’t get money—it was what most people would call impossible. I’ve taken a lot of risks and there has been danger—police, politicians have been after me but I didn’t give up. I had my vision.... and no one has been able to find fault because I always ran my business clean."

Real estate remains a fragmented, chaotic business with most builders known for underhanded deals. “Yes, it is true, all my competitors are either in jail, bail or bankrupt," he says, chuckling. To an extent, DLF under Singh brought order and professionalism to an informal sector that was “like the Wild West" in the 1980s, and he says it’s his values that kept him out of trouble even though the court cases on various counts, from land acquisition to delivery of properties, have been many.

The first of his “basic rules of business" is compliance. “Whatever the law, you have to be 100% in compliance, then no one can entangle you. Next, conduct your business so that everybody gains. Means, when you buy agricultural land ensure farmers not only get paid for their land but also get a chance at prosperity. Build so that the person who buys the apartment sees a rise in prices and benefits. In other words, everybody associated with you must have a share in prosperity."

Singh’s vertiginous, glass-clad towers have changed the landscape of all Indian cities and the way we live and work, creating gated communities and secure bubbles that rise above the reality of India. He describes DLF Phase V as “world-class, a world of its own", but hedges when asked if he’d live there. “Gurgaon is not there because DLF is owning; it’s because people want that kind of city...." He doesn’t disagree that the traffic, dangerous flooding and poor garbage and sewage management isn’t what he imagined. “I imagined a green city environment because I was privileged like this," he says gesturing to the planned, though polluted, beauty of central Delhi beyond his gate.

In 2006, even as DLF was continuing to grow, Singh and Indira—who died in 2018 after battling cancer for more than a decade—decided “against all advice" to divide the company and their properties between their three children, with a controlling interest to son, Rajiv who is now the chairman. In 2017, he sold his one-third stake in DLF’s rental arm to GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, for $1.9 billion. “I kept just one property for rental income in Gurgaon and this house, which was special to my wife and I," he says. “I’m happy with the decision. Everyone is a billionaire now. My grandchildren have entered the business and have brought their own touch," says the great-grandad of two, who has found love again at 90-plus in his companion Sheena de Boisgelin, a former model and entrepreneur he met through mutual friends.

“For a year or two after Indira died, my life was bad. Sixty-five years together… there can never be anyone like her, and when you have that kind of perfection, the happiest would be if you can both die together but that was not to be. I was at the age where all my friends were dead or disabled. I had no one," he says. Indira was always pragmatic and had told Singh to ‘make your life again’, but he began to drift. Television became his companion and a drink every evening. “I never take more than one drink, and one day I asked my longtime staff to bring me a second, and he said, ‘are you sure?’," recalls Singh.

That pause made him remember his promise to Indira and he began travelling again, returned to golf thrice a week, “and in the course of all that I met a very wonderful lady though that is a very risky thing at my age". The wide age gap drew censure from his children, her children, her father and their many friends. “She has built a new social crowd for me, which I needed. I need activity and social life. This is all nonsense that we should live in a certain way at a certain age, give up everything and wait for death. I ignored them all and used my head to organise my life," he says. “Life ka chakkar ho gaya but wherever I have turned, it has been good."

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