Brothers Vijay and Deepak Raheja, previously at the helm of B Raheja Builders—a real estate firm with operations in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Pune—have now divided their business and established separate companies. This information comes from an executive engaged in dealings with B Raheja Builders, who requested anonymity.
Executives associated with the Raheja brothers confirmed the split, but neither Vijay nor Deepak have commented on the matter publicly. The JW Marriott hotel, currently under construction at UB City in Bangalore, will be managed by V Raheja Design, the new company founded by Vijay. Efforts to get a response from Vijay’s Bangalore office went unanswered, and repeated attempts to contact Deepak resulted in being told he “doesn’t speak to the media.”
According to Akshaya Kumar, Chief Executive Officer of Park Lane Property Advisors, the split appears to be amicable, noting, “This is a planned split which is not driven by acrimony. Splits are inevitable when a company has grown big enough and two brothers decide to pursue interests separately.” The exact details surrounding the split remain undisclosed.
The newly established firms include Vijay Raheja’s V Raheja Design Construction and Deepak Raheja’s Advantage Raheja. Following the division, the brothers have allocated the various properties and ongoing projects of B Raheja Builders between their two companies. Notably, V Raheja Design is taking charge of the JW Marriott hotel initiative in Bangalore’s central business area, along with approximately 100 acres of land near the new Devanahalli airport.
A senior executive at V Raheja Design Construction, who did not wish to be named, stated, “Vijay Raheja’s new firm has several projects in Bangalore, including a villa project in Whitefield, a commercial complex in Richmond Circle, and another high-end residential project in Hennur. We are targeting a 2009 completion for the Marriott project.” This executive also mentioned that they are actively seeking additional land in Bangalore for future projects.
On the other hand, Advantage Raheja is currently working on a residential development named Iris Park in both Mumbai and Bangalore. A senior marketing executive at Advantage Raheja, remaining anonymous as they are not authorized to comment publicly, confirmed that some ongoing developments, including one in Bangalore’s Dollars Colony, would still be completed under the original B Raheja Builders umbrella.
Founded by Bhagwandas Raheja, the long-established B Raheja Builders has made a name for itself not only by developing renowned hotels like the JW Marriott but also premium residential properties across major cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, and Pune. The company also received a substantial investment of $45 million from the U.S.-based Wachovia for two projects in Bangalore last year.
In the realm of real estate, it is customary for firms to create separate entities for each project to facilitate efficient fundraising. B Raheja Builders, operating privately, does not publicly share independent valuations of its business scale.
Anuj Puri, country head of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, a prominent real estate advisory, remarked, “A single company can’t possess the kind of bandwidth and specialization which these individual companies have achieved. In the case of the Rahejas, the next generation has only consolidated and bettered what their predecessors achieved.” The B Raheja name is particularly respected for its competency in managing high-quality hotel developments.
Although the extended Raheja family has encountered internal disputes, they have also collaborated on various projects. For instance, Gopal Raheja and Vijay Raheja settled a court dispute concerning a hotel project in Bangalore two years ago. Additionally, Gopal and Chandru Raheja have had past disagreements that became noteworthy during the initial share sale filing for Shoppers Stop, heading into public awareness.
The Mindspace complex in a Mumbai suburb serves as a joint venture involving Gopal Raheja (widely recognized as GL Raheja) along with Suresh Raheja, in collaboration with the Nusli Wadia-led FE Dinshaw Trust. Notably, even the JW Marriott in Juhu, Mumbai, was a product of cooperative development by various Raheja entities.