Can a middle-class family actually own a farmhouse today, or is it still a rich man’s weekend fantasy? That question opens this episode of The Founder’s Dream, a founder podcast built on direct conversations with India’s builders and operators, where host Abhishek Vyas sits down with Manav Kakkar, Director of Kushal Multi Developers Pvt. Ltd., to unpack how farmhouse ownership has changed, what the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is doing to land prices around Gurgaon, and where the scams hide in rural real estate deals.
What This Founder Podcast Episode Reveals About Real Estate
Manav Kakkar has been selling farmhouses for over twelve years and, by his own account, has sold more than 3,000 of them through Kushal Farms. The conversation moves between the emotional case for owning land — happiness, family time, escaping city traffic — and the hard mechanics of pricing, documentation, and returns. If you’re weighing a second-home purchase or thinking about real estate as an entrepreneurial path, readers of our earlier podcast on real estate business will find this episode a useful companion.
Why Farmhouses Are No Longer Just for the Rich
Kakkar traces the idea back to 2012, when he noticed something among friends whose parents had plenty of money in Delhi but still looked worn out through the week. The only time they lit up, he says, was when Saturday and Sunday arrived and they headed to their farmhouse in Chhattarpur to play cricket.
Happiness is something I believe should be everyone’s right. Every person deserves it.
That observation became the pitch for Kushal Farms’ first project, launched at roughly ₹400 per square yard — a price Kakkar says drew mockery at the time, with people joking that the land was so cheap you’d dig up mud instead of value. Today, Kushal’s projects on the Delhi-Jaipur highway start around ₹45 lakh for plots just under 11,000 square feet, while projects directly on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway start from ₹70 lakh.
How Manav Kakkar Built Kushal Multi Developers Pvt. Ltd.
Before farmhouses, Kakkar worked at Max Life Insurance for about three years. Even then, he says, his real interest was in real estate — he kept watching the gap between what people earned from their jobs or businesses and what they earned from property appreciation on the side.
If you add up someone’s entire twenty years of job earnings on one side, and the appreciation on whatever real estate they invested in on the other, you will always see a big gap — your passive income ends up outgrowing what you earned through sheer hard work.
That belief pushed him to keep investing while employed, and once he felt ready, he built a residential-commercial project in Viratnagar, followed by two more projects, before moving fully into farmhouses under the Kushal Multi Developers Pvt. Ltd. business model. The Manav Kakkar success story is a familiar arc for anyone tracking an entrepreneur success story India readers tend to search for — a corporate job used as a runway rather than a destination. For a similarly grounded account of building a real estate business from scratch, see Ram Kumar’s entrepreneur success story on the same podcast.
Kakkar refuses to put a number on developer earnings or categorize his own company by size, telling Abhishek Vyas plainly that it’s “a vast field” best left to Google. What he will say is that his team’s vision is concrete: give 300 people this kind of happiness over the next three years, and the money, he believes, follows from there.
The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway Is Redrawing Gurgaon’s Second-Home Map
Real estate rules differ by state in India, and Kakkar points out that Rajasthan has always been friendly toward farmhouse development. Before the expressway, developers like his had to look at Goa via NH8, roughly one and a half to two hours from Delhi-Gurgaon. The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway has cut that distance to about an hour, with new exits promising to shrink it further.
That shift explains why places like Neemrana, Behror and Tijara — including a cluster called Naugaon — are emerging as Gurgaon’s second-home belt. Kakkar attributes this to Gurgaon’s position as a city with the highest disposable income across segments in the country, paired with heavy inbound migration that creates steady demand for first homes and, eventually, second homes with private pools and party spaces.
He also describes a genuine behavioural shift post-expressway: clients who once treated the farmhouse as a weekend escape now talk about living there full-time and commuting into Gurgaon for entertainment, shopping and office work on weekends instead.
This is a complete 360-degree shift. People want to move there now.
Spotting Scams: Unrealistic ROI and Lease Traps
Asked directly about the 21% or 200% return promises that flood real estate advertising, Kakkar is careful not to name names but is blunt about his own company’s policy.
If a 21 percent return turns into 42 percent, that is yours. If 200 percent turns into 400 percent, that is yours too. And if it drops to 100 instead of 200, that is also yours — because none of it should ever be promised in advance. We have watched the biggest developers go bankrupt making these kinds of commitments.
He flags a specific trick in lease-based real estate investment schemes: a property worth ₹100 gets sold to you at ₹200, and you’re then shown a fixed 20% annual return. In reality, over five years, you’re simply being paid back your own inflated purchase price while the developer uses your money in the meantime. He’s equally skeptical of free-visit gimmicks — luxury cars like a Lamborghini sent to pick up buyers who may be living in a modest flat, followed by high-pressure closing tactics. His advice is simple: skip the fancy pickup and visit on your own terms.
What to Check Before You Buy a Farmhouse
Kakkar reduces real estate risk to two categories, and nothing else.
In real estate, problems can only come from two things — documentation or possession. Those are the only two places where trouble hides.
- Verify documentation and possession status before signing anything.
- Visit the developer’s older, already-inhabited projects rather than relying on renderings of a new one.
- Check how many years a lease or buyback agreement actually runs before trusting a quoted annual return.
- Decide between distance from the highway (quieter, more private) and proximity (easier access) based on your own lifestyle, not a sales pitch.
- Buy your primary home first — a farmhouse works best as a second home and investment, not a starting point.
He also makes a case for short-term rentals as a practical use for an idle farmhouse: some projects in his portfolio carry ratings close to 4.9 on Airbnb and Google, which lets an owner block out dates for personal use — a wedding anniversary, say — while earning rental income the rest of the year. Property investment through real estate, in his view, works this way: rural tourism demand has grown sharply since the pandemic as people look for a short, organised escape from city routines, including the women building similar ventures outside metro hubs profiled in our piece on women entrepreneurs in Indian real estate.
Where the Smart Money Is Looking Next
Kakkar describes a well-documented global pattern: a bullish real estate cycle typically starts in commercial property, moves into residential, and finishes — often for the longest stretch — in agricultural and farmland. He says Gurgaon residential saw three-to-four-times appreciation over the last three years, and the last eight months have shown the same pattern building in farmland and farmhouses.
On where to look specifically, he points to areas newly connected by the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway — Tijara and Naugaon saw sudden interest once Rajasthan became easier to reach — and estimates roughly 25-30 developers currently active in that Rajasthan belt targeting Delhi-Gurgaon buyers. His closing point is less about location and more about occupancy: a fully built, beautifully landscaped project with no residents delivers no returns, while an area that genuinely fills up with end-users — the way Gurgaon itself did — is where land value actually moves. That ground-level detail is the kind of thing this founder podcast format keeps surfacing episode after episode.
Watch the full conversation with host Abhishek Vyas on The Founder’s Dream YouTube channel and subscribe for new founder interviews every week.
Frequently asked questions
Are farmhouses in India only for wealthy buyers?
No. Manav Kakkar says his company started Kushal Farms in 2012 with plots priced around ₹400 per square yard specifically so that farmhouse ownership would not stay limited to the rich, and projects on the Delhi-Jaipur highway now start near ₹45 lakh.
How has the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway affected farmhouse prices near Gurgaon?
Manav Kakkar explains that Rajasthan locations which once took nearly two hours from Gurgaon via the Goa NH8 route are now reachable in about an hour, pulling areas like Neemrana, Behror and Tijara closer and pushing up demand and investment.
Can buyers trust 21% or 200% return promises from real estate companies?
Manav Kakkar says Kushal Multi Developers never commits to future numbers, warning that lease arrangements promising fixed annual percentage returns are often just a buyer’s own money being paid back to them over a few years.
What should someone check before buying a farmhouse?
He says real estate problems come from only two places — documentation or possession — so buyers should verify both carefully and ideally visit the developer’s older, already-inhabited projects before committing.
How did Manav Kakkar move from a corporate job to real estate development?
He started his career at Max Life Insurance, but kept investing in real estate on the side after noticing that property appreciation often outpaced two decades of job earnings, eventually launching a residential-commercial project in Viratnagar before moving fully into farmhouses.
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