U.S. billionaire real-estate developer Donald Trump is entering the Indian realty market with a luxury residential tower in Mumbai, more than two years after announcing plans to expand in the south Asian nation. Trump, who has partnered with Mumbai developer Rohan Lifescapes Pvt. for his first venture in the country, expects to start marketing the project by March, said Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son and executive vice president at the Trump Organization LLC.
“We are doing a very luxury project with Rohan Lifescapes and we’ll be in India later this quarter to launch it officially,” Donald Trump Jr. has told the news agencies. Donald Trump’s son said in a July 2008 interview he planned to set up a fund of as much as $1 billion to buy property in India. The market place is beginning to understand and appreciate luxury, so there is a great opening for us there, as well as in resorts,” he said at the time.
Trump is hoping to take advantage of growing demand for luxury properties in a market with an increasing number of millionaires. India’s wealthy may almost double their assets to $6.4 trillion over the next five years as economic growth swells their ranks, Credit Suisse Group AG said in its global wealth report released Oct. 8.
The billionaire has branded buildings from skyscrapers in Manhattan to condominiums in Tijuana, Mexico, Trump World in the South Korean capital Seoul and the Trump Towers Istanbul. The Trump development is being built on the site of a former hospital in south Mumbai, in a neighborhood dotted with jewelry stores, the only Porsche showroom in the city and next to a Mercedes showroom, said two people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified before an official announcement.
