Why Canada-based baron Bob Dhillon is betting on Indian real estate

Bob Dhillon has already announced plans to develop a township off Chandigarh and has hired a consultant to look for business opportunities in what he calls B cities of the country

In the West they pronounce my name as Bob Dylan. I tell them I am Bob Dhillon with a stress on the second syllable of my surname. It is the surname of my father, my grandfather and my ancestors who were from India," says the 48-year-old property tycoon based in Calgary, Canada, and who now wants to do business in India.

He has already announced plans to develop a township off Chandigarh and has hired a consultant to look for business opportunities in what he calls B cities of the country - and that includes Ahmedabad, Kochi, Hyderabad, Pune, etc.

"I am going to meet the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, in my next trip. I am looking at opportunities across India, but then the government has to relax its FDI norms further to attract more institutional capital in the real estate sector," says Dhillon, president and CEO of realty firm Mainstreet Equity Corp, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. He made his first million when he was just 19 by re-selling homes he had bought and refurbished with money borrowed from loan sharks.

"Unlike in India, they don't break your legs in Canada if you don't pay up. They just take the homes away. In my case, I never had to look back after that," says the Indian-origin billionaire, who now owns and manages as many as 10,000 apartments in Canada, islands, casinos and rainforests, along with interests in financial services, among other businesses.

He owns a 3,000-acre island in Belize, Central America. Some of his neighbours who own properties, he says, include the likes of actor Leonardo DiCaprio, singer Madonna and iconic filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

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Dhillon was just 12 or 13 when he and his family arrived as "economic refugees" in Canada, fleeing civil strife in Liberia where his father was a prosperous businessman. "We lost everything we had to the civil war and though my father started doing business in Canada it wasn't big. My mother worked at the post office. So I wanted to do something to regain lost glory, raise the status of my family...and I did it," says Dhillon, who over the past 30 years not only aggressively bought properties across western Canada and embodied the immigrant success story but also fought a battle with cancer. '

"I don't want to talk much about it, but I am aloft on a second wind," says the Japan-born Dhillon, who is considering investing up to Rs 540 crore in developing a township near the upcoming international airport off Chandigarh. His family comes from Tallewal village in the Barnala district of Punjab.

But things in India need to change a lot, says Dhillon who has visited the country quite frequently: thrice over the past six months. He hopes that our rulers soon wake up to the need for global institutional capital - which, he says, people like him can bring to the country - to rev up the economy further.

"The rest of the world is doing it," he says, referring to the need to meet the demand for housing in the country. He argues that foreign investment alone can meet the demand and make housing affordable for the majority of Indians.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/real-estate/news/why-canada-based-baron-bob-dhillon-is-betting-on-indian-real-estate/articleshow/17998738.cms

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