Gurugram just got a new address in India’s wealth story. Entrepreneur Manav Sardana has bought a penthouse at DLF’s ultra-luxury project The Dahlias for a staggering Rs 271 crore, making it the most expensive single-unit residential transaction in the country’s history. Here’s a look at the record-breaking deal, and everything worth knowing about the man behind it.
India’s Costliest Home Deal: The Rs 271 Crore DLF Dahlias Penthouse
The penthouse Sardana has picked up sits inside DLF The Dahlias, the developer’s flagship super-luxury project on Golf Course Road in Sector 54, Gurugram. The unit spans 17,200 sq ft of super area and 10,500 sq ft of carpet area, which works out to roughly Rs 1.58 lakh per sq ft on super area and around Rs 2.6 lakh per sq ft on carpet area.
That pricing puts Gurugram’s top-end real estate in the same bracket as premium condominiums in Manhattan, where the most exclusive units typically sell for $2,000-3,000 (roughly Rs 1.7-2.6 lakh) per sq ft.
The Rs 271 crore figure comfortably breaks the previous record for the project, set by investor Madhusudan Kela, who had bought a unit at The Dahlias for Rs 120.7 crore. Two people aware of the deal confirmed the transaction to the Economic Times.
Why The Dahlias Keeps Making Headlines
DLF launched The Dahlias in October 2024 across 17 acres in DLF Phase 5, and it has quickly become the address of choice for India’s wealthiest buyers. The project comprises just 420 residences spread across eight towers, set amid more than 50 acres of man-made lakes and landscaped green spaces — an exclusivity that has helped drive some of the steepest per-square-foot prices seen in Indian real estate.
By the September 2025 quarter, DLF had already sold 221 units in the project for close to Rs 16,000 crore, at an average price of about Rs 72 crore per apartment. Buyers have ranged from business families to celebrities — former India cricketer Shikhar Dhawan reportedly bought a unit at The Dahlias for around Rs 65.6 crore earlier this year — but Sardana’s purchase now sits at the very top of that list, and of any residential deal in India.
DLF has said it is seeing strong interest in its luxury portfolio not just from metro buyers but increasingly from tier-two cities and non-resident Indians looking to park wealth in trophy real estate rather than traditional financial assets.
Who Is Manav Sardana?
Manav Sardana is an entrepreneur best known for his long association with Imperial Auto Industries, one of India’s largest manufacturers of fluid transmission products for the automotive and off-highway sectors. Public filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs list him as a director across more than a dozen companies linked to the Imperial Auto group, including Imperial Silicon Private Limited, Kreuz Hydraulics Private Limited, and Imperial Martor Engine Tubes Private Limited, among others.
Imperial Auto Industries: The Business Behind The Wealth
Imperial Auto was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Faridabad, Haryana. Over more than five decades, it grew into India’s largest integrated manufacturer of fluid transmission products (FTP) — components like rubber hoses, metal and nylon tubes, hose assemblies, and brake and fuel-injection tubing that are critical to automobiles and industrial vehicles.
The company’s scale is significant: it operates over 20 manufacturing facilities spread across India, Germany, and the United States, and maintains a product library of more than 25,000 SKUs serving major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) both in India and overseas. By 2022, the Imperial group was generating group revenues of approximately Rs 2,200 crore. More recently, filings show its standalone operating revenue crossing Rs 500 crore, with EBITDA growing over 57% year-on-year.
In recent years, Imperial Auto has also pushed into the electric vehicle supply chain, developing battery cooling and thermal management products by building on its core expertise in fluid transmission — positioning itself for the shift toward EVs in India and globally.
The Warburg Pincus Deal
The Sardana family’s association with Imperial Auto took a major turn in March 2022, when Stone Plant Investments B.V., an affiliate of global private equity major Warburg Pincus, acquired a majority stake in Imperial Auto Industries and its group companies. Under the deal, Warburg’s investment vehicle picked up a 70% stake in the Haryana-based company in two tranches — 51% upfront, with the remaining 19% acquired roughly a year later.
The deal, whose exact financial terms were never disclosed, was one of several big-ticket Indian bets by Warburg Pincus around that period, alongside investments in Ola and other domestic companies. Tarun Lamba continued on as Managing Director and CEO of Imperial post-acquisition, while Viraj Sawhney, Managing Director at Warburg Pincus India, spoke of using the platform to build a diversified auto components player spanning both traditional automotive and the emerging EV and off-highway markets. EY acted as the sole financial advisor to Imperial on the transaction.
It’s this decades-long build-up of the Imperial Auto business — and the substantial payout that came with Warburg Pincus buying into the group — that has put Manav Sardana in a position to make India’s single largest home purchase to date.
The Bigger Picture: Gurugram’s Ultra-Luxury Boom
Sardana’s Rs 271 crore purchase is as much a story about Gurugram’s real estate market as it is about the buyer. The Golf Course Road corridor — running through DLF’s Aralias, Magnolias, Camellias and now Dahlias developments — has spent the better part of a decade turning into India’s version of a trophy-home district, and pricing has now converged with what buyers pay in global gateway cities.
For a city that dominates headlines every monsoon for waterlogged streets and civic strain, a Rs 271 crore penthouse deal is a sharp reminder of how much wealth is now concentrated at the very top of India’s real estate market — and how far entrepreneurs like Manav Sardana, built on decades of manufacturing muscle rather than instant unicorn wealth, are willing to go to own a piece of it.