Where do you stay when you’ve made it in India?

Roshnee Desai, Founder and Creative Director at LOCAL, writes about a changing India and what gaps the real estate brands and urban development bodies of India still need to fill, despite a burgeoning economic growth

Image: Copyright Roshnee Desai

There is a glaring gap in India’s real estate vision - a strange paradox in India’s growth story. 

We’ve got billionaires, booming businesses, rising HNIs, and a surging upper-middle class. We’ve got purchasing power. Ambition. Taste. But when it comes to real estate—specifically residential environments that reflect this success—we’re stuck.

Whether it’s private villa communities, new townships, or even public infrastructure, there’s simply nowhere to “upgrade” to.

Where is our Beverly Hills, or our Karen (Nairobi), Camps Bay (Cape Town), or Roppongi (Tokyo)? Where’s the aspirational urban design for India’s wealth creators?

Beverly Hills, USA

Instead, we see more of the same: hastily built “villaments” crowded together on tight parcels of land. Narrow internal roads. No zoning logic. Minimal green space. A far cry from true luxury, space, or design innovation.

Yes, affordable housing is critical—and rightly so. But once people have moved up the ladder, to our various gradients of income segments, what do they aspire to?

We are a vast country. Surely, there’s space for at least one well-zoned, thoughtfully planned city or suburb that reflects our growth. 

India’s real estate developers and government urban planners (do they exist?) seem to be missing the opportunity—and the responsibility—of shaping urban aspiration.

Camp's Bay, South Africa

As someone who believes in India’s future, I find this disheartening. We’ve built global tech companies and cultural capital. But where do our creators, founders, artists, and thinkers go when they want to live better?

Right now, the answer feels like: nowhere. And that’s a shame.

It’s time we asked more of our real estate market. Not just in terms of ROI, but in terms of vision.