K.P. Singh: The City Builder

Dressed in a claret-coloured shirt and dark slacks, K.P. Singh is just back in New Delhi from Lynndale, his 110-acre home in Mussoorie, where he brought in his 95th birthday with family and friends, and musicians flown in for the occasion.

- Shalini Umachandran

Dressed in a claret-coloured shirt and dark slacks, K.P. Singh is just back in New Delhi from Lynndale, his 110-acre home in Mussoorie, where he brought in his 95th birthday with family and friends, and musicians flown in for the occasion. "I love music. I love to dance. I wish I could sing or play, but I can't, so I listen," he says, when I ask Singh, who is No. 12 on Forbes' list of India's richest and rumoured to host lavish parties with the best bartenders, chefs and international celebrity musicians, how he celebrated his birthday. "My life, I take every day as a birthday."

Born in Bulandshahr in present-day Uttar Pradesh on 19 November 1929—online sources say 15 August 1931—"but you know how certificates were made in those days"—Kushal Pal Singh is chairman emeritus of DLF Ltd. He took over the real estate company, now India's biggest listed property firm by market cap, from his father-in-law in 1974-75. He was its chairman until his retirement in 2020, four decades during which his ideas and novel methods of implementation transformed the real estate business in India and, for better or worse, created a blueprint for upscale apartment living.

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.

K.P. Singh managed to forge one of the first public-private partnerships to develop land, a model other builders would replicate