The Indian-born real estate developer has built up his reputation over decades since working as an interior designer in Oman in the 1970s on projects such as the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque and Al Bustan Palace Hotel. He moved to Dubai several years later and founded the Sobha Group of companies, which is currently building two of Menon’s biggest projects yet — the $8.5bn Mohammed Bin Rashid District One development, and the $4bn Sobha Hartland scheme. Both are residential communities located inland from the Burj Khalifa/Dubai Downtown area.
Menon is also planning a third large-scale Dubai residential scheme, which will be the group’s first foray into a new submarket it terms ‘affordable luxury’, expected to help it target a wider audience. Sobha Group has significant other interests and investments across Qatar, Bahrain, Brunei, Tanzania and India, where it has a listed entity on the Bombay Stock Exchange. In an interview in February, Menon told Arabian Business that the group plans to be in “one other non-Middle Eastern, non-Asian territory by 2020”, such as the UK or US.
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