Aditya Virwani & Karan Virwani

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For two years before they stepped into their family business, property baron Jitendra (Jitu) Virwani made it a point to spend time with sons, Karan and Aditya, on the job. There was nothing operational about the role. Instead, all they did was spend time travelling with him, attend meetings, and watch how businesses and deals were made, up close. “We call it shadow working,” Karan, the older of the siblings, says. It was during that time that Karan was drawn to the world of co-working spaces and chose to build WeWork in India. The idea was to build WeWork India to a scale and sell it back to WeWork global. But with WeWork Inc. eventually going bankrupt, Virwani and the Embassy Group have been doubling down on their India play. WeWork India was listed on the bourses last year. “Right now, tailwinds are in our favour. The market is moving in our favour, and we are financially healthy,” Karan says. Scaling to size is also a strategy that Karan’s brother, Aditya, has been following as MD of the Embassy Group, where he has steered the company from a private developer into one with a diverse portfolio spanning commercial, residential, and hospitality. Under Aditya, the group has also redrawn much of its focus to the residential real estate sector, one of the fastest-growing in the country, since Covid-19. Today, the group is largely spread across Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi. “We’ve been a luxury residential player,” Aditya says. “But we now want to play across spectrums, from an entry-level product, to a villa worth hundreds of crores.” So, do their works get intertwined even though they look after entirely different arms? “He is my landlord,” Karan jokes. “So, I have to pay him rent.”