For DLF’s KP Singh, life has been full of twists and turns. When faced with obstacles, he battled them with courage, conviction and optimism, and made the impossible possible.

Share Market Live

NSE

In an exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan, Singh recalled how he started in life with primary education from a small madrassa in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh. He then did his graduation but became a horseman. And then he went to England and did his aeronautical engineering. Since he was a polo player there, he joined the Indian Army, he said, explaining the twists and turns in his life.

“I enjoyed army thing, 9-10 years. From madrassa to aeronautical engineering, I enjoyed every bit of life,” he said, although it was full of twists and turns.

Then he got married, and to a “good family and a great lady”, he said of his wife Indira Singh and her family.

On his father-in-law’s insistence, he then got into manufacturing motors and batteries. “Thereafter, the family pushed me in 1975 to revive DLF,” he said.

Singh said his late father-in-law Chaudhary Raghvender Singh was a great visionary for having started and incorporated DLF well before independence. He had built 21 colonies in Delhi back then as thousands of people came to India from Pakistan following the Partition.

But by the time he came into it in 1975, it was close to shutting down. At that time, his biggest challenge was how to buy land from people and integrate it to build townships. And he had no money.

“Land will be given to you on credit only when an owner has explicit confidence and faith in your integrity. I really had to earn that thing. I had to do it myself. Government did not help mem to buy even a piece of land. It’s my own thing,” he said.

Gurgaon is a classic example, and a pace-setter for ensuring more income to the state, a catalyst for bigger employment and provides better homes with recreation for people, especially the younger generation, he said.

In all this, what drove him was his determination and “a burning desire in life” that even if it was small, “I must be something”.

“So it became a way of life with me. Obstacles came as a dark cloud. I never saw the darker (side), I saw the silver lining. So by nature I became optimistic in everything I do. So, what looked impossible, I made it possible. So my life is based upon courage, conviction. Always aim high and try to make impossible possible.”

Also read:

Here is why shares of DLF are on the radar

(Edited by : Pradeep John)