In Bengaluru, houses in the Billionaires’ Street (Koramangala), Epsilon Villas or Adarsh Palm Retreat (APR) are owned by the likes of Sachin and Binny Bansal, Flipkart cofounders, and its CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy along with a few Infosys co-founders and the Raveendrans. The owners of several new-age firms such as Unacademy’s Gaurav Munjal, PhonePe’s Sameer Nigam, Meesho’s Vidit Aatrey, the Zetwerk founders dot the palm tree and Mercedes-lined APR. ‘India’s CTO’ Nandan Nilekani, Wipro owners – the Premjis, and Rahul Dravid also own homes in Koramangala, where property rates have already built a formidable moat of exclusivity.
Up north, the landscape is a carbon copy of the southern Silicon Valley. The joke is that should a CEO need to raise funds, s/he need not step out of DLF’s The Camellias, where rates are not far from touching the Rs 1-lakh/sq feet mark.
Business Meetings, Brainstorming Sessions
The Camellias in Gurgaon or Adarsh in Bengaluru are places where business meetings, brainstorming sessions and deal talks are concluded during morning runs and evening walks. There’s a ‘network effect’ that attracts more and more such individuals as these communities start building up, Sandeep Reddy, co-founder of real estate sales digital platform Zapkey, told ET.”A specific set of people attracts more similar people to the area. Venture capitalists and founders go to Epsilon. Koramangala third block (popularly known as Billionaires’ Street) has the traditional company leaders, conglomerates, and first generation of internet entrepreneurs,” Reddy said. “New-age founders are largely going to Adarsh Palm Retreat or Epsilon.”
Rich & Famous
Documents accessed through CRE Matrix, a real estate data analytics firm, showed some of the prominent names who own apartments at The Camellias include Varun Alagh, founder of Mamaearth parent Honasa; Anita Lal, founder of Good Earth; Lokvir Kapoor, executive chairman and co-founder of Pine Labs; Ashneer Grover, former managing director of BharatPe; Kartik Bharat Ram, joint managing director of SRF Ltd; JC Chaudhry, founder of Aakash Educational Services; Ravish Kapoor, managing director of realty firm Elan Group; and Smiti Agarwal, wife of Hemant Agarwal, CMD of V-Bazaar Retail.
Executives of more than two dozen companies and startup founders such as Peyush Bansal, co-founder of Lenskart, Aman Gupta, founder of boAt, and several other judges of popular reality show Shark Tank India have made The Camellias their home.
Sources said some other high-end buyers include Cars24 co-founder and CEO Vikram Chopra, while many CEOs including TPG Capital’s Puneet Bhatia and Arvind Mendiratta of Hippo Stores also live there.
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