Kalpesh Mehta of Tribeca Developers, licensed partner of the Trump Organization in India, says will announce six new Trump Tower projects soon.
Reacting to Donald Trump’s election as the president of the United States, Kalpesh Mehta, founder of Tribeca Developers, the licensed partner of the Trump Organisation in India, said on November 6 that the win was ‘historic’ and reminisced on the advice he received from Trump himself as he was setting up the company: “Do it like I did. Don’t do too many projects but whatever you do make sure it is a trophy.”
“This is a historic win..We believe that a Trump presidency is fundamentally good for the world and for further strengthening the India – US relationship. PM Modi and President Trump greatly admire and respect each other and this relationship has the potential to be greatly beneficial to the world at large,” said Mehta.
Mehta, who studied at Wharton, and whose relationship with Donald Trump (Jr) goes back to over 15 years (where he was pursuing his MBA and Donald Trump (Jr) was an undergrad), said that he had met Donald Trump several times and the advice he received from him when he was contemplating setting up Tribeca was “Do it like I did. Don’t do too many projects but whatever you do make sure it is a trophy.”
Tribeca incidentally is the name of a place in New York city where Mehta lived. “It is my favourite neighbourhood in the city and I always wanted to bring New York luxury to India and that’s where the name came from.”
He mentioned that his real estate management professor at Wharton made the ‘marriage’ between the Trump brand and Tribeca happen. “We were in the same school -Wharton- he was there for his undergrad and I was there for my MBA and we had a professor who was a mentor to me and a mentor to the Trump kids. He made the marriage happen. We signed the first deal on the back of a cocktail napkin in New York (Don and me) almost 13-14 years back.”
On plans to bring Donald Trump (Jr) to India, Mehta said that “the plan is to bring both Donald Trump (Jr) and Eric Trump to India next year…definitely in the first half.”
The Indian partner Tribeca has finalised six new deals totalling 8 mn sq ft with the US brand. These are expected to have a sale potential of over ₹15000 crore.
The new projects will be located in Pune, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. “Two deals will be with repeat partners,” he said, adding at least four deals will be announced by early December.
“In cities where Trump Towers already exist, the second version of these properties may be called Trump World Towers,” he said.