Chart from TOI

Mangal Prabhat Lodha, the founder of Lodha Group and a lawmaker representing India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party , has become the nation’s richest real estate developer after the company’s sales increased 22 percent.Lodha’s wealth is estimated at 271.5 billion rupees ($3.8 billion), according to the GROHE Hurun India Real Estate Rich List . Lodha, who started the real estate business three decades ago in Mumbai, is constructing the 75-story Trump Tower in India’s commercial capital.The total wealth of top 100 Indians in the nation’s real estate sector grew 27 percent from year ago to 2.36 trillion rupees, according to the Hurun list, as large property developers took advantage of a slowdown in the industry to acquire smaller rivals. Jitendra Virwani of Embassy Group, which is poised to sell India’s first real estate investment trust, is the second richest.Developers at the bottom of the pyramid are definitely affected by the slowdown in the real estate sector, but the top developers are relatively resilient as they are organized and have strong execution, Vineeth Chandrababu, associate vice president research at Hurun Report India said.