Regulatory action hammers former Indian soldier who built a city
Listing irregularity pushes Kushal Pal Singh off his perch as nation's richest developer after ban
It was, by his own account, a chance encounter that turned former soldier Kushal Pal Singh into the man who built a city from nothing and made billions.
Singh was toppled from his spot as India's richest property developer last week, when his company DLF was hit with a three-year ban from capital markets, accused by the regulator of failing to disclose key information at the time of its record-breaking 2007 market listing.
Investors wiped more than US$1.3 billion off the company's market value after the decision.
Village boy turned visionary developer, Singh may be largely unknown outside India. But as the man who built "boom city" Gurgaon and fostered the outsourcing industry - with a little help, he says, from ex-General Electric boss Jack Welch - he has been among the most influential Indian names of recent decades.
To its cheerleaders, Gurgaon, the city he imagined and built 24km outside India's capital Delhi, is a prototype of where young, upwardly mobile Indians want to live and work. The outsourcing boom has made the city India's third-richest.
"It is India's first smart city," said Rajeev Talwar, executive director at DLF. "Its infrastructure may be creaking ... but there is a new part which supports a new kind of life."