MUMBAI: Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has hosted a lavish housewarming party to show off his just-completed new skyscraper residence, believed to be the world’s most expensive private home.Some 80 of India’s rich and famous attended the party on Friday night at the 27-storey building, which dominates the skyline above the sprawling slums and traffic-choked roads of Mumbai, the Times of India reported.Indian novelist Shobhaa De, who attended the party, called the building-reported to be the world’s priciest private residence costing over one billion dollars-”the Taj Mahal of the 21st century”.Ambani, who heads India’s largest private company, petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, will need 600 employees to maintain the palatial residence, reports said.De described visiting “what has got to be the biggest, glitziest ballroom in India-the Palace of Versailles is a poor cousin” with groaning buffet tables lining “one of the unending walls”.
Ambani, his wife and three children are to live in the 174-metre (570-feet) tall home, which according to reports has six floors of parking, swimming pools and a cinema. It is named after the mythical Atlantic island “Antilia”.One newspaper said the residence epitomised “the swagger and confidence of India’s economically buoyant upper echelons”.Ambani, 53, is India’s wealthiest man with a 27-billion-dollar fortune, according to Forbes.Anti-poverty campaigners have highlighted the contrast between the home and the plight of many in Mumbai, where half of the estimated 18 million population live in slums, with sketchy or non-existent power and water supplies – Nation
