New Delhi, June 1:

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking.

The building, named Antilla after a mythical island, will have a total floor area greater than Versailles and be home for Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff. Draped in hanging gardens, the building will have a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club. As the ceilings are three times as high as a normal building’s, the173m tower will only have 27 floors.

With property prices rocketing, the building is already worth more than GBP 500m. It is expected to be ready n next year.

The family currently lives in a 14-storey building, Sea Wind. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group is India’s largest private company, with interests in oil, retail and biotechnology. The 50-year-old became the country’s first rupee trillionaire this week, taking his net worth to GBP14bn.

The Indian economy is soaring: yesterday it posted annual growth of 9.4 per cent. Friends of the Ambanis said that the trillionaire’s new home was “comparable to those owned by friends such as Lakshmi Mittal”. The UK-based steel tycoon bought the most expensive house in London last year, paying GBP60m for a place in Kensington Palace Gardens. Urban planners say Mukesh’s home is part of a global rush for tall buildings that has seen skyscrapers spring up in Dubai, Shanghai and Seoul. In India, planning rules and a historic antipathy to unrestrained materialism has meant that this race to touch the sky has largely bypassedthe cities.