Apparel maker Ahuja buys home in London’s Notting Hill for $27.6 mn: report

Apparel maker Harish Ahuja, who owns and runs Shahi Exports Pvt. Ltd, has bought a home in London’s Notting Hill district for £21 million (about $27.6 million), Bloomberg reported, citing a UK filing.

The 20,000 sq. ft property near Kensington Gardens was earlier owned by a UK-registered charity and religious order, the report said.

Ahuja’s son, Anand, and his daughter-in-law, Sonam Kapoor—a Bollywood star—plan to use part of the eight-story residential convent as the couple’s home following redevelopment, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified.

The sale of the property in July marks one of this year’s biggest UK residential deals.

The share of prime central London homes bought by Indians has risen 3% between 2019 and 2023, the most in that period for any single nationality, the report said, citing data from broker Hamptons International.

Entities owned by Indian billionaires are lapping up trophy properties in London, with Serum Institute’s “vaccine prince” Adar Poonawalla recently purchasing a property in Mayfair, an affluent area near Hyde Park, for £138 million ($173 million) in one of London’s most expensive home sales.

The family office of billionaire owner of Essar group Ravi Ruia, part of the Essar Group, had sealed one of the biggest real estate deals last year by acquiring Hanover Lodge for £113 million ($141.5 million), a Regent’s Park mansion that was linked to Russian property investor Andrey Goncharenko.

Just this month, Indians also bought two high-profile flats in Mayfair, one of which once belonged to Countess Raine Spencer, late Princess Diana’s stepmother, for £7.85 million and £9.15 million, the Bloomberg report said.

Of late, London’s luxury property market has faced pressure due to an impending overhaul of Britain’s “non-domiciled” (non-dom) rules, which aim to eliminate preferential tax treatment for wealthy foreigners.

Poonawalla had recently slammed the UK’s move to phase out “non-dom” tax incentives available to foreigners as well as the country’s post-Brexit immigration curbs, in an interview to the Financial Times.

UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt had announced in the budget earlier this year that the government would phase out the non-dom tax status.

The nom-dom tax policy allows British residents with a permanent home overseas to skirt paying taxes on foreign income and gains in the UK. They pay UK tax on the money that they earn in the UK only.

Wealthy people often tapped this route, choosing a lower-tax country as their domicile to save significantly on taxes.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, who is also Infosys Ltd co-founder N. R. Narayana Murty’s daughter, is one of the most well-known non-doms.

Murty had agreed to start paying UK tax on her earnings generated outside the UK after details of her status had emerged.