Inside the Life and Career of Sushil Kumar Mohta, Founder and Chairman of the Merlin Group

A Kolkata trader's son built a real estate business from scratch in 1984 and, four decades later, helped orchestrate one of Eastern India's largest property deals.

Key Takeaways

• Sushil Kumar Mohta founded Merlin Projects Limited in 1984, growing it into the Merlin Group, one of Eastern India's largest privately held real estate developers.

• He is a Founder Member of CREDAI India, the apex body for Indian real estate developers, and currently serves as President of CREDAI West Bengal.

• In June 2025, Merlin Group and its co-owners sold South City Mall in Kolkata to Blackstone for roughly Rs 3,250 crore, reportedly the largest real estate transaction in the city's history.

Sushil Kumar Mohta has spent more than four decades building one of Kolkata's most recognizable real estate names, working largely outside the spotlight of institutional funding or public markets. Merlin Projects Limited, the company he founded in 1984, has grown into the Merlin Group, a privately held developer with residential, commercial and retail projects spread across six Indian cities and Colombo, Sri Lanka.

He's also been a fixture of Indian real estate's industry establishment for years, as a founding figure at CREDAI India and the current president of its West Bengal chapter. Most recently, he was on the other side of the state's biggest property sale in memory: the roughly Rs 3,250 crore sale of South City Mall to the U.S. private equity firm Blackstone.

So who is Sushil Mohta, and how did he build a real estate group large enough to attract that kind of deal? Here's his story.

Mohta's early life

Mohta was born and raised in Kolkata into a Marwari family, a community long associated with trading and entrepreneurship in Indian commercial life. His father ran his own business, and Mohta has described him as the central influence on his early ambitions.

He completed a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, at age 17, and rather than pursuing further formal education, went straight into his father's business, where he picked up the operational and people-management experience he later drew on when starting his own company.

Founding Merlin Projects

Mohta incorporated Merlin Projects Limited in 1984, though the company's active real estate development work didn't begin until 1990. It started as a residential developer in Kolkata at a time when the city faced a substantial, long-unmet demand for housing, a legacy of underinvestment in residential construction in the decades before India's economic liberalization.

The company grew without outside institutional funding, financed instead through internal accruals and project revenue, a model that kept it privately held and, according to the company, allowed for what Mohta has described as more patient, long-term decision-making than a publicly traded developer might pursue.

Building the Merlin Group's portfolio

Over the following decades, Merlin built a substantial residential footprint in Kolkata, with more than fifty completed residential and commercial complexes and over 150 independent bungalows to its name, including developments such as Merlin Homestead, Merlin The One and Merlin Heights.

The group also expanded into commercial and retail real estate. It developed the World Trade Center Kolkata at Salt Lake Sector V, in partnership with the New Town Kolkata Development Authority, positioning the project as the first World Trade Center in Eastern India and aiming to draw technology and business services tenants to the city. Mohta also held board positions at two of Kolkata's largest retail destinations, South City Mall and Acropolis Mall.

In recent years, the group has pushed beyond West Bengal, expanding into Pune, where it has built out its Elementa project and, in 2025, used MIVAN aluminum formwork construction for the first time. It has also developed projects in Chennai, Ahmedabad, Raipur and Colombo, and in February 2025 announced a residential project developed in partnership with the Fashion TV brand.

The South City Mall sale to Blackstone

The most significant recent milestone in Mohta's career came in June 2025, when Blackstone acquired South City Mall, a more than one-million-square-foot retail complex with reported annual turnover around Rs 1,800 crore, from its group of owners, including Merlin. The roughly Rs 3,250 crore deal was widely reported as the largest real estate transaction in Kolkata's history and the largest mall transaction in Eastern India.

Mohta has said the exit aligns with the group's forward plans, which he's described as including new malls, IT parks and residential projects across Kolkata and Pune.

Leadership in CREDAI

Beyond his own company, Mohta has held senior positions within India's real estate industry associations for years. He is a Founder Member of CREDAI India, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India, and currently serves as President of CREDAI West Bengal, where his responsibilities include representing the state's developer community in policy discussions and addressing homebuyer grievances.

He has also been involved with the Global Real Estate Institute and industry bodies including FICCI, CII and the Shopping Centres Association of India, and serves as an Advisory Board Member of the Dronah Foundation, a nonprofit focused on built heritage and community development.

Mohta's family

Mohta's son, Saket Mohta, serves as Managing Director of the Merlin Group and now oversees its day-to-day operations, including its expansion into Pune and other cities outside Kolkata. The two represent a first-to-second-generation transition that industry observers have pointed to as a relatively smooth model of succession in Indian real estate, with Sushil Mohta retaining the chairmanship and strategic oversight while his son runs daily operations.

The family remains based in Kolkata, where Merlin's headquarters sits on Prince Anwar Shah Road.