NEW LUXURY shopping malls, such as DLF’s Emporio (left) and Promenade (right), are under construction in Delhi and throughout India. Opportunities abound for foreign investors willing to work with local contacts. (Photograph by Prashant Panjiar.)

Two of these local leaders are Kushal Pal Singh, chairman of the Indian property giant DLF Universal, and Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder of the Bharti Enterprises conglomerate. Singh built DLF into India’s largest real estate company, developing IT parks, residential and corporate towers and shopping malls in 30 cities, including the landmark DLF City in Gurgaon, best known for its ship-shaped Gateway Tower and DLF Square, an office complex that houses Fortune 500 companies such as New York Life and Citibank. He is currently developing six luxury malls, the most intriguing of which is the high-end megamall Emporio in South Delhi that will feature Dior, Chanel and Prada.

Mittal, the son of a Congress party politician from Punjab, founded his company in 1976 in his hometown of Ludhiana. He was 18 at the time, and made bicycle parts and hosiery. But his real success came from selling mobile phones to the masses, offering service for 1 cent per minute to customers who might spend only $3 or $4 each month. It was the kind of ploy that spurred people to call him crazy. Today Bharti is one of the 10 largest companies in India, with a market cap of more than $25 billion, and its Airtel division controls one-quarter of the country’s mobile phone market with some 40 million subscribers.

The two men symbolize the country’s entrepreneurial spirit—and they and others like them are keen to tie their expertise and connections with American investment capital.

Collaborative Efforts
This summer, millions of households in India, many of them stocked with new televisions and other consumer goods, tuned into their country’s version of The Apprentice. In this reality show, sponsored by Mittal, 49, five winners received undergraduate places at five British universities.

Mittal (who is not related to the Mittal Steel family) is a man who can chuckle at his crazy dreams—while simultaneously offering proof that they will come true. He calls himself the "poster boy of collaborations," and has been involved in 20 joint ventures since he started his telco. Foreign investors eager to capture a corner of India’s economy—which few doubt is poised for long-term growth—would do well to look for partnerships with entrepreneurial-minded businessmen of his ilk.

Counting themselves among Mittal’s backers are Evelyn de Rothschild and his American-born wife, Lynn. The Rothschilds spend one week each month in India pursuing their business interests. In 2004, through the family investment bank, they and Mittal launched a 50-50 partnership, the much publicized FieldFresh Foods, which aims to grow fresh fruit and vegetables in India for distribution at home, as well as in Europe and the Middle East.

FieldFresh Foods suffered a shaky beginning. The venture had what even Mittal admitted were "mixed-to-poor" results in its first year, a period in which India’s entire farm sector failed to meet its targeted growth rate of 4 percent due in large part to infrastructure problems and bureaucratic inefficiencies. For FieldFresh Foods to thrive, Mittal must succeed in his efforts to establish a contract system with farmers and teach them to produce consistent crops with the seeds and techniques the company provides. He is trying to harness the country’s traditional subsistence farmers, and claims that this kind of revolutionary change could make agriculture the next big wave on the subcontinent. "India has the highest amount of irrigable land in the world and could be the food capital of the world," Mittal says. "It has currently less than a 1 percent stake in the world food market."