Rajiv Singh and Family

DLF's fortune was built on land nobody else wanted, acquired before anyone knew what it would become.

The land that is now Gurugram's corporate district was, in the 1980s, largely agricultural. K.P. Singh, Rajiv Singh's father, acquired large tracts of it at a point when few developers were looking beyond Delhi's established boundaries, and built DLF into a real estate company whose commercial projects became the physical addresses of India's private sector expansion. Rajiv Singh now leads the company, which is among India's largest real estate developers by market capitalisation.

The commercial corridors they developed in Gurugram made it possible for multinational companies to set up large back-office operations in India during the outsourcing boom of the 2000s, providing the physical infrastructure that the IT services industry needed to grow at the pace it did. That the land was acquired early, at low cost, and developed patiently over decades is as much a part of the story as any subsequent project. DLF's portfolio now spans commercial offices, residential development and retail malls across the National Capital Region and other cities.