India, Sept. 21 -- When Joygopal Podder moved to Gurugram in 1988, the Millennium City was still little more than farmland, forested hills and empty stretches. A handful of row houses, two apartment blocks, Garden Estate and Silver Oaks, and a deserted DLF Qutab Plaza dotted the landscape. The now-bustling NH-48, then NH-8, was a narrow road, while Sadar Bazar remained the commercial heart. Anchoring the city's early stirrings was the five-year-old Maruti factory.

Podder, then 28, left behind a rented flat in Delhi's South Extension to buy a modest row house in DLF Phase 1, moving in with his mother. Born in London and raised in Delhi, he was working as a sales manager with a leading FMCG company, commuting daily to the capital. "I had d...