Biography of Sushil Mohta, Founder and Chairman, Merlin Group

 Sushil Kumar Mohta is one of Eastern India's foremost real estate developers and entrepreneurs, the Founder and Chairman of the Merlin Group, a diversified real estate conglomerate headquartered at 22 Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata, that he established in 1984 and has built over more than four decades into one of the most respected and enduring names in Indian real estate. Under his founding vision and sustained leadership, the Merlin Group has grown from a residential developer in Kolkata into a nationally significant real estate organisation with a presence across Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Raipur, and Colombo, with a portfolio spanning residential complexes, commercial offices, IT parks, retail malls, industrial estates, hospitality properties, and townships. The Merlin Group's stated mission, a home for every Indian, encapsulates the philosophy of inclusive, quality-driven development that has guided its growth across more than four decades and more than fifty residential and commercial complexes.

Born into a Marwari family in Kolkata, Sushil Mohta idolised his father, who was a self-made man, and from a very young age learnt to dream big and aspired to surpass his father's achievements and make his family proud. Having completed his education from St. Xavier's College in Kolkata at the age of seventeen, he began helping his father in the family business, gaining the foundational business and people management skills that would equip him for the entrepreneurial journey he was about to undertake. In 1984, he founded Merlin Projects Limited, what would become the institutional nucleus of the Merlin Group, and began the patient, conviction-led work of building a real estate brand that would over the next four decades establish Kolkata's most iconic residential and commercial properties and extend its reach to multiple Indian cities and beyond.

He is a Founder Member of CREDAI India, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India, the apex body of the Indian real estate industry, and serves as President of CREDAI West Bengal, reflecting both his seniority within the industry and his commitment to shaping the policies, standards, and professional culture of Indian real estate development at the highest levels of industry governance. He has been deeply engaged in research on housing and urban development practices in developed countries, studying changing consumer preferences, modern planning of condominium projects, shopping malls, and schools, and modern construction techniques, and has consistently brought this international perspective to bear on the quality and innovation standards of the Merlin Group's projects. He has been actively involved with the Dronah Foundation as an Advisory Board Member, supporting charitable activities in built heritage, community, and environment, and his social engagement extends across community development, blood donation camps in partnership with the Indian Army, and a wide range of civic welfare initiatives.

EARLY LIFE

Sushil Kumar Mohta was born and raised in Kolkata, West Bengal, into a Marwari family with deep roots in the commercial and trading traditions that have made the Marwari community one of the most significant entrepreneurial forces in Indian business history. His father was a self-made man who built his own business from modest beginnings, and the young Sushil Mohta grew up idolising both his father's achievements and the discipline, ambition, and commercial instinct that had produced them. From a very early age, he absorbed the family's values of hard work, integrity, and the aspiration to build something of lasting significance, developing the entrepreneurial orientation and the personal ambition that would define his adult professional life.

His early education took place in Kolkata, culminating in his studies at St. Xavier's College, one of Kolkata's most prestigious educational institutions, associated with the Jesuits and known for its rigorous academic standards, its emphasis on intellectual and ethical formation, and its distinguished alumni across every field of Indian public, professional, and commercial life. He completed his education at St. Xavier's College at the remarkably young age of seventeen, demonstrating the intellectual ability and personal maturity that would later find expression in his early entrepreneurial ventures and his systematic building of one of Eastern India's most respected real estate groups. Upon completing his education, he immediately joined his father in the family business rather than pursuing further formal study, a decision that reflected both his eagerness to apply his abilities in practice and his recognition that the most relevant education for the entrepreneur he intended to become would be found in the actual conduct of business rather than in the continuation of formal schooling.

His years working alongside his father in the family business gave him what he has described as the business and people management skills he required in the later years when he started his own real estate business. This apprenticeship in the family enterprise provided him with the practical foundations of commercial management, client relationships, financial discipline, and team leadership that no formal education programme could have replicated in the same experiential depth. It also gave him a first-hand understanding of what it takes to build and sustain a business through the inevitable cycles of growth, challenge, and renewal that characterise the long arcs of successful enterprise, an understanding that would prove invaluable as he set about building the Merlin Group through more than four decades of India's complex and often turbulent real estate market.

EDUCATION

Sushil Mohta completed his school education and then his undergraduate studies at St. Xavier's College in Kolkata, one of the finest educational institutions in West Bengal and one of the most respected colleges of the University of Calcutta. St. Xavier's College was founded by the Society of Jesus in 1860 and has for more than a century and a half maintained a tradition of academic excellence, personal character formation, and the cultivation of civic and social consciousness in its students. It has produced an extraordinary list of distinguished alumni spanning business, the professions, government, the arts, and science, and its emphasis on analytical rigour, ethical conduct, and breadth of learning gave Sushil Mohta the intellectual foundations that have informed his approach to both business and public life. He completed his commerce education there at the age of seventeen, a reflection of both his academic ability and his eagerness to begin his entrepreneurial journey.

In the decades that followed his formal education, Sushil Mohta has pursued a continuous and highly practical form of professional self-development through his deep engagement with the international dimensions of real estate practice. He has been involved in extensive research on developed countries on various aspects of housing and urban development, studying changing consumer preferences, modern planning methodologies for condominium projects, shopping malls, and schools, and the latest construction techniques being deployed in advanced real estate markets around the world. This sustained engagement with international practice, conducted alongside his active leadership of one of India's most productive real estate development organisations, has given him a breadth of knowledge about global real estate trends that has consistently informed Merlin Group's approach to innovation, quality, and design in its own projects.

His participation in international forums including the Global Real Estate Institute (GRI), CREDAI India's national leadership, the Shopping Centres Association of India (SCAI), and multiple FICCI and CII engagements has further deepened his understanding of the global forces reshaping real estate markets and given him a platform for contributing his own experience and perspectives to the national and global conversation about real estate development, urban planning, and housing policy. He is widely regarded within the Indian real estate industry as one of its most thoughtful and forward-looking senior figures, a developer whose four decades of active practice have produced not merely a substantial portfolio of completed projects but a genuine and continuously evolving understanding of what quality real estate development for Indian families and businesses requires.

FAMILY

Sushil Mohta was born into a Marwari family in Kolkata, a community whose extraordinary entrepreneurial traditions have shaped Indian commerce across many decades and across virtually every sector of the Indian economy. His father's example as a self-made businessman was the most powerful formative influence on his early life, instilling in him from childhood the ambition, the discipline, and the belief in the possibility of building something significant from personal effort and integrity that have been the animating principles of his own career. His deep respect for his father's achievements and his desire to surpass them while making the family proud have been described as the driving personal motivation behind his early entrepreneurial choices and behind the sustained commitment to excellence that has characterised the Merlin Group's development over four decades.

The most important professional relationship of Sushil Mohta's family life is his partnership with his son Saket Mohta, who serves as Managing Director of the Merlin Group and is the second generation of the founding family to lead the organisation. Saket Mohta is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Merlin Group and for steering its pan-India expansion, including the development of new projects in Pune and other cities beyond Kolkata, and the pursuit of new opportunities across asset classes and geographies. The partnership between Sushil Mohta's founding vision and sustained strategic oversight and Saket Mohta's operational leadership and expansion drive represents one of the most successful examples of first-to-second-generation business succession in the Indian real estate sector, combining the deep institutional knowledge and industry relationships of the founder with the energy, technological fluency, and market ambition of the next generation.

CAREER

Early Business Career and Founding of Merlin Projects (1984)

After completing his education at St. Xavier's College and serving his entrepreneurial apprenticeship in his father's business, Sushil Mohta founded Merlin Projects Limited in 1984, establishing the corporate entity that would become the institutional nucleus of what is today the Merlin Group. Though incorporated in 1984, Merlin Projects began its active real estate development operations in 1990, building its initial reputation firmly on residential housing in Kolkata before progressively expanding across asset classes and geographies. The company was established as a privately held entity and has grown entirely through internal accruals and project revenues rather than through institutional funding rounds, a model of patient, conviction-led organic growth that reflects Sushil Mohta's founding philosophy of building for the long term rather than optimising for short-term returns.

The choice of real estate as the domain of his entrepreneurial ambitions was both a practical and a visionary one. Kolkata in the early 1980s was a city with enormous unmet housing demand, a legacy of decades of underinvestment in residential construction during the period of economic stagnation that preceded the liberalisation of the Indian economy, and Sushil Mohta's entry into residential development at this moment positioned the Merlin Group to benefit from the long arc of demand recovery and economic growth that would characterise Indian real estate over the following four decades. His founding vision, expressed in the Group's mission of providing a home for every Indian, framed real estate development not as a purely commercial activity but as a contribution to the social and human development of the communities his buildings would serve.

Building Eastern India's Premier Real Estate Brand

Over the course of the first two decades of Merlin Group's existence, Sushil Mohta systematically built the organisation's reputation for quality, reliability, and customer commitment that today distinguishes it as one of Eastern India's most trusted real estate names. The Group's early portfolio of residential complexes in Kolkata established the benchmark of construction quality and customer service that remains the Merlin brand's most important competitive asset: a reputation for standing firm on commitments, to upkeep its tradition while striving to improve its offering and service to customers and residents. This reputation, built project by project and customer by customer over decades of consistent delivery, is one of the most valuable assets that Sushil Mohta's founding stewardship has created, and it provides the foundation on which Saket Mohta's current expansion strategy is built.

The Merlin Group's portfolio of residential developments in Kolkata has grown to encompass more than fifty residential and commercial complexes and over one hundred and fifty independent bungalows, establishing it as one of the most prolific residential developers in the history of Eastern Indian real estate. Projects including Merlin Homestead, Merlin The One, Merlin Edge, Merlin Rise, and Merlin Heights are among the properties that have defined the premium end of Kolkata's residential market and given the Merlin brand its association with modern urban living of the highest quality. The Group's residential development has consistently balanced the premium market, where it has established some of Kolkata's most distinctive address landmarks, with the commitment to accessible housing expressed in its core mission, ensuring that the Merlin brand speaks to the aspirations of a broad range of Indian homebuyers rather than catering exclusively to the luxury segment.

Retail and Commercial Expansion: South City Mall and Acropolis

One of the most significant dimensions of Sushil Mohta's leadership of the Merlin Group has been his strategic expansion into retail mall development and management, establishing the Group's presence in what became Kolkata's two most prominent retail destinations. He served on the Board of South City Mall, a landmark development in Kolkata that grew into one of the largest and most visited malls in Eastern India, with over one million square feet of retail space, an annual turnover of Rs. 1,800 crore, and monthly footfall figures of approximately two million visitors that placed it among the highest-traffic retail destinations in the entire region. In June 2025, the Merlin Group participated in the landmark sale of South City Mall to Blackstone, the American private equity firm, for Rs. 3,250 crore, the largest real estate transaction in the history of Kolkata and the largest mall deal in Eastern India. Sushil Mohta confirmed that the exit aligns with the Merlin Group's future plans, including new malls, IT parks, and residential projects across Kolkata and Pune, reflecting a strategic portfolio evolution toward new opportunities. He also served on the Board of Acropolis Mall in Kolkata, another prime retail destination that reinforced the Merlin Group's position as one of the leading players in Eastern India's organised retail real estate sector.

World Trade Center Kolkata: Landmark IT and Commercial Development

Among the most nationally significant projects associated with the Merlin Group under Sushil Mohta's leadership is the World Trade Center Kolkata, developed at Salt Lake Sector V in Kolkata's premier IT hub of New Town, in partnership with NDITA (New Town Kolkata Development Authority). The World Trade Center Kolkata, a landmark commercial development in Eastern India, was publicly positioned by Saket Mohta as the first World Trade Center in Eastern India, establishing Kolkata's credentials as a destination for leading national and international technology and business services companies. The WTC Kolkata campus, operated under the Princeton Club brand, has hosted events in collaboration with the Indian Army's Eastern Command, including blood donation camps, and participates actively in the Bengal Chamber of Commerce's industry outreach initiatives including the Tech E-Summit. The development reflects the Merlin Group's strategic commitment to high-quality commercial real estate as an enabler of Kolkata's economic development and its ambition to position the city as a competitive destination for corporate real estate occupiers.

Pune Expansion and National Portfolio Development

Under the combined leadership of Sushil Mohta as Chairman and Saket Mohta as Managing Director, the Merlin Group has undertaken a significant expansion of its geographic footprint to Pune, one of India's fastest-growing real estate markets and the country's second most important information technology hub after Bengaluru. The Group's Pune portfolio includes the Elementa project, which achieved the milestone of completing the final slab of its C Building in Elementa 2.0 in 2025, a construction achievement that also marked Merlin Group's first deployment of MIVAN technology, an aluminium formwork construction system that delivers superior concrete quality and faster construction timelines, in the Pune market. In February 2025, the Merlin Group announced a Fashion TV branded residential project, generating coverage across Business Standard, PTI, and major real estate publications, the first partnership of its kind for the Group and a recognition of its standing as a developer credible enough for a globally branded residential collaboration. The Group's geographic presence has also extended to Chennai, Ahmedabad, Raipur, and Colombo in Sri Lanka, establishing Merlin as a genuinely national and increasingly international real estate organisation.

CREDAI Leadership and Industry Advocacy

Among the most significant contributions that Sushil Mohta has made to the Indian real estate industry beyond his own Group's development activities is his sustained and senior engagement with CREDAI, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India, the apex industry body that represents the interests of real estate developers across the country. He is a Founder Member of CREDAI India, one of a small group of senior developers who established the national organisation and gave it the institutional foundations and the industry relationships needed to become a credible voice for the real estate sector with government, regulators, financial institutions, and the public. His role as President of CREDAI West Bengal, also known as CREDAI Bengal, has made him the primary representative of Kolkata and West Bengal's real estate development community in the national and state-level policy conversations that shape the regulatory and financial environment within which developers across the state operate.

In his CREDAI leadership roles, Sushil Mohta has addressed complaints and grievances from homebuyers, advocated for policy reforms that improve the ease of doing business in real estate, and contributed to the development of the professional standards and ethical frameworks that CREDAI seeks to establish for its member organisations. His combination of founding credibility within CREDAI India and sustained operational leadership of CREDAI Bengal has made him one of the most respected and influential voices in the Indian real estate industry's engagement with government and civil society on the full range of issues that affect housing policy, urban development, and the regulatory environment for real estate development.

International Research and Knowledge Leadership

A distinctive and consistently emphasised dimension of Sushil Mohta's professional leadership has been his sustained engagement with the international dimensions of housing and urban development practice. He has conducted research on developed countries on various aspects of Housing and Urban Development, studying changing consumer preferences, modern planning of condominium projects, shopping malls, and schools, as well as modern construction techniques deployed in advanced real estate markets. This commitment to learning from international best practice, conducted over decades in parallel with his active leadership of a major development organisation, reflects a professional philosophy that takes seriously the obligation to continuously improve the quality and relevance of the Merlin Group's offering to its customers and to the communities it serves.

His participation in the Global Real Estate Institute (GRI), an international forum for senior real estate professionals, has given him a platform to engage with counterparts from leading real estate markets around the world and to contribute his own extensive experience in Eastern Indian real estate to the global professional conversation. His advisory board membership of the Dronah Foundation, which supports charitable activities in built heritage, community, and environment, and promotes social and cultural activities contributing to self-sustainable environments for communities, reflects an intellectual engagement with the broader environmental and cultural dimensions of the built environment that extends well beyond the purely commercial scope of his development activities.

INTERESTING FACTS

• Sushil Mohta completed his education at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, at the remarkably young age of seventeen and immediately joined his father in the family business rather than pursuing further formal study, beginning the practical entrepreneurial education that would equip him to found the Merlin Group in 1984.

• He is a Founder Member of CREDAI India, the apex body of the Indian real estate industry, one of a small group of senior developers who established the national organisation and built it into a credible and influential voice for real estate development across the country.

• The Merlin Group, which he founded in 1984, has grown over more than four decades into one of Eastern India's largest real estate organisations, with a portfolio spanning more than fifty residential and commercial complexes, over one hundred and fifty independent bungalows, shopping malls, IT parks, industrial estates, hospitality properties, and townships across six cities and Sri Lanka.

• He served on the Board of South City Mall in Kolkata, which was sold to Blackstone in June 2025 for Rs 3,250 crore, the largest real estate transaction in the history of Kolkata and the largest mall deal in Eastern India, a landmark exit that Sushil Mohta described as aligning with the Merlin Group's future plans for new malls, IT parks, and residential projects.

• He has conducted extensive research on housing and urban development practices in developed countries, studying changing consumer preferences, modern planning of condominium projects, shopping malls, and schools, and modern construction techniques, bringing an international perspective to Merlin Group's approach to quality and innovation across more than four decades of active development.

• The Merlin Group's first MIVAN technology construction milestone was achieved in Pune in 2025, with the completion of the final slab of C Building in Elementa 2.0, a construction achievement that reflects the Group's commitment to adopting innovative techniques for superior concrete quality and faster project delivery under the combined leadership of Sushil Mohta as Chairman and Saket Mohta as Managing Director.

• He has served on the Board of Acropolis Mall in Kolkata in addition to South City Mall, making the Merlin Group one of the few real estate developers in Eastern India to have held board positions in two of the region's largest and most prominent retail destinations simultaneously.

• The Merlin Group's founding mission, a home for every Indian, encapsulates Sushil Mohta's conviction that real estate development is not merely a commercial activity but a contribution to the social and human development of Indian communities, a philosophy that has guided the Group's development of both premium and accessible residential projects across more than four decades.