Billionaire boulevard

From traditional bungalows to ultra-modern skyscrapers, the homes of India's super rich boast of opulence, class and style

Try this out: zero in on the area around Prithviraj Road, Amrita Shergill Marg, and Aurangzeb Road in downtown New Delhi on Google Maps and count the number of swimming pools you can see - you'll find at least 30 in an area that doesn't measure more than 10 square km. This could easily be the highest concentration of swimming pools in the country. This is, after all, where billionaires live: Laxmi Niwas Mittal, Ratan and Naveen Jindal, old moneyed families like the Birlas, Dalmias (seven houses), Modis, Singhanias, Burmans, Samir and Vineet Jain of The Times Group and Ram Prasad Goenka. If you can afford to move in here, your neighbours will be jetsetters like Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel, Atul Punj of Punj Lloyd, KP Singh of DLF and hotelier Priya Paul. The streets are lines with old Arcacia, Jacaranda, Gulmohar, Jamun and Neem trees. Power seldom fails. And all government offices are a short drive away. A house here can cost up to Rs 400 crore. Each bungalow here is spread over an acre.

Still, some billionaires find it stifling and have hence moved to spacious farmhouses, each of at least ten acres, on the outskirts of the city. Here live heavyweights like Malvinder Singh, Samir Thapar, Arun Bharatram and Siddharth Shriram. Malvinder's farmhouse is beautifully landscaped and well lit by sunlight. The collection of artworks is impressive. The drawing room of Bharatram's farmhouse opens into a sprawling lawn. A portrait of Baba Alauddin Khan hangs on the wall facing the lawn. (Money lives here)

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What the Lutyens Zone is to Delhi, Malabar Hill is to Mumbai. It is home to the Ruias, Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry, Adi Godrej and Venugopal Dhoot. Malabar Hill combined has a net worth of about $30 billion! The going rate of an apartment here is Rs 80,000 per square feet. One of the fanciest houses here is Birla House, built by Rameshwar Das Birla in the 1930s (Mahatma Gandhi would often stay here and spread over two acres, where Yash Birla stays. The arching driveway is lined with Jackfruit, Gulmohar and mango trees. At the entrance are big and small Tanjore paintings, a white artwork depicting goddess Durga, and the sculpture of a Yaksha in black. The adjacent sitting room is rectangular and has old-fashioned wooden furniture with cane seats and backrests and tiger-print cushions. There are porcelain vases and figurines on the floor, and old European canvases on the walls. Three flights of wooden stairs, lined with paintings that look like calendar art but could be priceless heirlooms and family photographs, lead to Birla' gym on the terrace. A grass-like carpet, made by Birla Transasia Carpets, covers the terrace and the sort steps that lead to the gym. At least ten air-conditioners chill the gym. The doors of the elevator in Birla House are like the gates of a Rajasthan haveli.

The pride of the place, of course, is Mukesh Ambani's Antilla, one of the seven most expensive homes in the world. The 27-storey house is 570 feet tall and was built at an estimated cost of $1 billion. It has a spa, temple, theatre which can seat up to 50 people, yoga studio and ballroom, parking space for 168 cars, three helipads and the lobby has nine elevators. But it could soon have competition from JK House, the 40-storey house that Gautam Hari Singhania is building on Bhulabhai Desai Road, not far from Antilla. There used to be a Raymond dealership where Singhania's house is coming up. Ratan Tata's house in Colaba is being built on a 13,500 square foot area. The three-storey structure will have bedrooms on two floors, a huge study, a swimming pool, sundeck, a library, personal gym, while the basement will have parking space for up to 12 cars.

In Chennai, the Boat Club area is the abode of the rich. Kalanithi Maran and the Murugappa family live here. The Murugappa house is one of the few houses which boasts of the old Chettinad architecture. Maran lives in a massive bungalow surrounded by high walls. In Alipore, Kolkata, they say the fences are taller than the buildings! H M Bangur is spread over 50,000 square feet and is one of the most opulent ones. A nine-bedroom house, it has seven living rooms, a home theatre. Bangur's house has a temple with a silver door which is home to a 100-year-old Lord Venkatesh statue.

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A drive through the tree-lined roads of Jayanagar in south Bangalore would not give you the idea that it is anything more than a charming, middle-class neighbourhood with more single- and double-storey houses than multi-storey apartments. But take one of the lanes off 9th Main and you will be in front of the large, double-storey residence of SD Shibulal, the Infosys CEO. The house is a mix of white walls and granite, with a tiled roof reminiscent of the traditional architecture of Shibulal's home state, Kerala. Fittingly, Jayanagar, where Infosys had its first office in Bangalore, is also where Infoys co-founder and chairman Narayana Murthy has chosen to spend his retirement. The other billionaire who calls Jayanagar home is GMR's GM Rao.

Biocon's Kiran Mazumdar Shaw's residence, Glenmore, on the outskirts of Bangalore was once a palm plantation. The house with red-tiled roof has an envious art collection, is spread over 17,000 square feet and was designed by architect Sandeep Khosla. Infosys co-founder and UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani's residence is in Koramanagala, 3rd Block, an area once considered the outskirts of the city but now a coveted residential neighbourhood, while Azim Premji lives in the Wipro campus, on Sarjjapur Road. The billionaire who has his home in the heart of the city is Vijay Mallya. But the house Mallya inherited from his father on Vittal Mallya Road has now been razed to make way for Kingfisher Towers, touted as the city's most expensive luxury residential project. Mallya will occupy the penthouse of the 34-floor building, and will use a separate entrance and private elevator.

Apart from their primary residential properties, most of the members of the billionaires' club have holiday homes or farmhouses. Steel tycoon Mittal has a luxury villa in Scotland. The wallpaper and furniture in Mittal's Scotland home in Perthshire Country is from Ralph Lauren's home collection. The Ruia brothers too own a holiday home in Goa's Cocoa beach. Built atop a cliff, the house was an old Goan style bungalow which the Ruias have now converted into a luxury mansion.

Indulekha Aravind contributed to this article