Builder man - Rajiv Singh

Rajiv Singh is taking India’s leading real estate company DLF places, quite literally. After making successful forays into insurance, hospitality and retail, the company—which Singh now runs as Vice Chairman and heir apparent to DLF Chairman K.P. Singh, his father—has bagged the Indian Premier League (IPL) title sponsorship rights. By associating DLF with cricket—the biggest passion in the country—Singh intends to make it a popular brand with high recall.

All this while, DLF’s realty business has remained solidly on track, delivering an impressive third quarter net profit of Rs 2,139 crore, about 6 per cent higher than the second quarter of FY 2007-08. Its order book during the quarter was equally impressive, with booking for 1.41 million sq. ft of residential projects, compared to 0.11 million sq. ft and 0.49 million sq. ft in Q2 and Q1, respectively. The MIT-educated Singh, who holds a degree in mechanical engineering, is already planning ahead. He is pretty confident about DLF delivering around 16 million sq. ft in 2007-08 and expects the delivery volume to touch 25 million sq. ft by 2008-09.

Name: Rajiv Singh Age: 48 Designation: Vice Chairman Institution: DLF

For a man and his company setting such a pace, a few mishaps here and there are to be expected. DLF’s most notable failure recently was the unsuccessful bid for a telecom licence that effectively put on hold its foray into the booming telecom sector. Earlier, its plan to list on the stock markets in 2006 was delayed by a year due to regulatory issues. But when DLF did finally list in July last year, its Rs 9,000-crore IPO made Indian stock market history as its biggest-ever issue, till it was bettered by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power recently. How he steers his company in the face of massive competition will now make interesting watching.

— Pallavi Srivastava