Omani billionaire enters London property market

Sobha Realty, the leading multinational premium real estate developer with HQs in India and Dubai, has announced its entry into the UK with the launch of the new 4,800 sqft Sobha Global Studio at 92 Park Lane, overlooking Hyde Park, in central London’s prestigious Mayfair district.

The new Sobha Global Studio is being launched in order to deliver four strategic objectives. Firstly, to showcase Sobha’s brand and luxury residences to a domestic UK audience and international visitors to London. Secondly to provide clients/contacts with a UK-based team of dedicated personnel. Thirdly to facilitate brand alliances and joint ventures with London-based luxury brands and real estate partners. Finally, to have a London HQ to help realise Sobha Realty’s long-term plan to list on the London Stock Exchange and enter the UK property market.

Launching on the 30 April 2019, the new Sobha Global Studio is located over double-height ground, mezzanine and basement levels. Combining state-of-the-art marketing, scale-models and luxurious interiors the studio will guide visitors through the history of Sobha Realty, promote Sobha Hartland, the Group’s flagship UAE development, and explain the refined luxury and quality of the brand’s exclusive residences. The studio will also provide a new London office for Sobha Realty Founder & Chairman PNC Menon and a dedicated London sales, marketing and customer care team.

Founded and led by PNC Menon, a first-generation entrepreneur turned Omani businessman and philanthropist; Sobha Realty is an award-winning premium real estate development and investment group, operating in the U.A.E., Sultanate of Oman, Bahrain, Brunei and  India.

With an established pedigree for defining quality, perfecting detail and providing beautifully designed and crafted living environments, the Sobha brand offers customers the opportunity to purchase a distinctive high-quality home from an exclusive collection, marketed through dressed showhomes.

Construction dressed interiors and furniture is designed and delivered in-house in order to guarantee uncompromising quality to the purchaser. The supply of homes released for sale is always limited and managed, retaining value and exclusivity for the customer.

The Sobha brand can trace its origins back to 1976 when it was established in Oman as a bespoke furniture fit out establishment which evolved into a premium interior design business. By 1984 the business had established a reputation for uncompromising quality, and this led to involvement in various high-profile projects in Oman including the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque and the Al Bustan Palace Hotel.

In 1995 the business expanded into India, gaining the brand name Sobha, named after PNC Menon’s wife. In 2003 Sobha Realty moved into the United Arab Emirates, undertaking projects including the current £3bn (GDV) flagship development Sobha Hartland in the centre of Dubai, an 8m square feet (183 acre) waterfront community, providing 5,000 luxury apartments and 358 villas and townhouses, fronting onto the idyllic Dubai Canal.

Located within the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum city, Sobha Hartland forms a new destination designed around local neighbourhoods providing luxurious apartments, premium villas and four-bedroom townhouses. The luxury community is complete with access to world-class amenities, restaurants, retail centres, educational and entertainment facilities and including 2.4m square feet of greenery in the form of parkland, landscaped areas, planting and gardens.

The grand building at 92 Park Lane housing the Sobha Global Studio was chosen for its provenance, quality and prestige. The site was formerly occupied by a palatial mansion, Grosvenor House, which was the London home of Mayfair’s historic landowner, the Second Duke of Westminster.

The current building was designed and built in 1926-1929 by world-renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed India’s Viceroy’s Palace and much of New Delhi; working with Detmar Jellings Blow, Grosvenor’s Estate Manager, built by Edwardian tycoon Albert Octavius Edwards.

On the corner of Park Lane and Upper Grosvenor Street, overlooking Hyde Park, 92 Park Lane was built in grand Edwardian style with French windows and faced in Salamandre stone, the finest French stone used on Chateau. The building’s dramatic atrium is 6.2 metre (20ft) high and retains its original Edwardian ceiling, designed by Edmund Wimperis of Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie; inspired by the ceilings of the Duke of Westminster’s mansion which previously occupied the site.

PNC Menon, founder & chairman of Sobha Realty said, “We are pleased to announce the opening of the Sobha Global Studio on London’s famous Park Lane. Mayfair is a premier luxury brand destination, so it was our address of choice. London is a world city, with last year over 40m vistors travelling to the capital for business and leisure, so this studio showcases our brand to the world.”

Tirthankar Ganguly, chief marketing officer at Sobha Realty said, “Other international developers visit London and hold temporary exhibitions but the locations, quality of presentation and customer journey can be hard to control. We are a luxury brand therefore we chose to acquire and construct a global studio on Mayfair’s world-renowned Park Lane, providing us with a prestigious and permanent brand and product presence in the heart of luxury London.”