Their mother described their bond as akin to ‘Ram’ and ‘Lakshman’. In a letter dated February 21 this year, parts of which found its way into newspapers, Manju Mangal Prabhat Lodha also said her friends wished they had sons like hers.
However, unlike the originals in the Ramayana, this ‘Ram’ and ‘Lakshman’ have followed a different script. The brotherly love gave way to a bitter court battle with each accusing the other of deceit, forgery and lying — all this in full public glare. The bickering finally ended on Monday after brothers Abhishek and Abhinandan Lodha agreed to resolve their dispute over usage of the Lodha brand name as per the court’s suggestion of mediation.
But more than the court, observers say, the mother’s firm tone in the letter did the trick. Her letter to her sons had come with a list of directives, including: “you will not say anything wrong about each other, you will not fight with each other and you will not interfere in any manner in each other’s business”. In that sense, it was a familiar script: the mother finally becomes the peacemaker, whether it’s films or business families.
Abhishek and Abhinandan had separated in 2015 through a family settlement agreement initiated by their father Mangal Prabhat Lodha, India’s eighth richest person, a full-time politician and now a minister in the Maharashtra cabinet. Under the agreement, Abhishek, 45, got the family’s real estate business Lodha Developers and Abhinandan, 43, was given the financial services business. Ironically, the settlement itself became the source of acrimony, with Abhishek’s Macrotech Developers moving court to stop the House of Abhinandan Lodha (HoABL), run by his younger brother, from using the Lodha brand name for his commercial ventures.
Abhishek’s success in running his business didn’t come easy. A Master’s in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, he worked briefly at consulting firm McKinsey & Co before joining the empire his father built in 2003. His younger brother had joined the business five years earlier. A self-confessed workaholic, he would often say, “work never tires me. I love what I do.” Says an old colleague, “he knows exactly what is going on in the business from land buying, design, marketing, sales , litigations. Not everyone can do that,” the person said, adding while Abhishek made them work hard, he was generous in handing out rewards.
Abhishek once said Lodha is synonymous with scale, from World Towers in Mumbai’s Lower Parel, one of the tallest towers in the country to the 7 acre The Park in the same locality to 4,500 acre Palava City near Dombivali, touted as the country’s first smart city. He also got The Trump Towers to Mumbai.
“If Hiranandani built Powai (in Mumbai), Palava is five times of that..It is not easy to build such projects at such a young age,” said an associate. The political lineage would have helped in terms of goodwill and connection, but it was Abhishek’s perseverance that built the business.
There is enough evidence of that. Macrotech Developers posted sales bookings of `17,630 crore in FY25 (up 21% y-o-y), surpassing its guidance. It bought 10 land parcels in FY25 to build projects with sales value of `24,000 crore. Its debt has come down drastically and in the last three years, sales have risen 5.5% on a CAGR basis and profits moved up 12.81%.
His brother hasn’t been sitting idle either, though HoABL’s operations are modest compared to Macrotech Developers. People say the easiest thing Abhinandan could have done after the separation was to start vertical real estate development, which is what Macrotech does. But he chose to carve out a different path of selling plots of land in emerging second-home destinations, and that too online. HoABL, which refers to itself as the Amazon of land, has among its clients names like Amitabh Bachhan.
Lodha Ventures, owned by him, also has Tomorrow Capital, a PE fund , among others. Since its inception in 2018, it has grown to become one of the most successful firm in the space, delivering an average return of more than 100% per annum, his website says.
Abhinandan, who set up Lodha Ventures in 2015, is known to be an out and out sales, marketing and brands person — he handled the same in the undivided Lodha empire. “Abhinandan is much better than Abhishek in sales..He can sell anywhere anything,” said a banker who has worked with him.
HOABL is aiming for a business of `10,000 crore by FY30 with a annual growth of 30%. It is looking for revenues of `2,200 crore in FY25 and about `3,000 crore in FY26, he told FE recently. It is looking to buy land in 13 new locations.
With the brand name dispute getting resolved, industry players expect both to focus on their business and grow further. Even if both brothers try to prove who the ‘real’ Lodha’ is, it should remain a healthy competition, they say. But then ‘should’ is always a tricky word.