Meet Indian who owns Rs 1200 crore home in London, costlier than Mukesh Ambani’s 300-acre Stoke Park property

Billionaire businessman and son of one of India’s richest persons, Adar Poonawalla recently shocked the London real estate market with a deal to buy a 25,000-square-foot residence for around Rs 1446 crore or £138 million. The 42-year-old Serum Institute of India (SII) CEO’s acquisition is the most expensive property deal in London in 2023 and the second costliest house ever sold in London. 

Adar Poonawalla is now the Indian with the costliest home in the UK capital, a city where several Indian billionaires own private residences. The list includes the likes of steel baron Lakshmi Mittal and Asia’s richest person Mukesh Ambani. But it is neither Mittal, who once bought a house in London for Rs 980 crore, nor Mukesh Ambani who owns a Rs 592 crore mansion, who held the tag for UK’s richest Indian home owner before Poonawalla. The tag belonged to Ravi Ruia.

Ruia paid £113 million or an estimated Rs 1200 crore to Russian businessman Andrey Goncharenko to buy the famous London property Hanover Lodge in 2023. It was dubbed as the biggest real estate deal in the UK in recent history just months before Poonawalla’s stunning acquisition. 

Ravi Ruia is one half of the Ruia brothers behind the Essar Group. Together with his elder brother Shashi Ruia, he controls an empire with interests in shipping, infrastructure, metals, mining and oil refining. Ravi Ruia holds a mechanical engineering degree from the College of Engineering, Guindy in Chennai.