Ambani home ‘Antilia’ lit up in Tricolour, Mukesh & Nita celebrate Independence Day with grandchild

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani and his family have made 'Antilia' their home for the past few years. It is located in Mumbai’s affluent neighbourhood of Altamount Road, also known as India's Billionaires' Row as it houses some of the most expensive residences in the world including some eye-popping, luxe residential skyscrapers. The sky-high Ambani mansion was named after a mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean.

The skyscraper-mansion, which is the world's most expensive private home, is over 400,000-square-feet and is 173 metres (568 ft) tall. It has 27 storeys with an extra-high ceiling equivalent to a building with around 60 floors. Despite its enormous size, the home has been designed to survive an earthquake of magnitude 8 on the Richter scale.

The land on which ‘Antilia’ was built originally housed an orphanage founded in 1895 by a wealthy shipowner Currimbhoy Ebrahim. The orphanage, Currimbhoy Ebrahim Khoja Yateemkhana, belonged to a charity run by the Wakf board which requested permission to sell the land in 2002. The same year, the trust sold the land for the purpose of educating underprivileged Khoja children to Antilia Commercial Private Limited, a commercial entity controlled by Mukesh Ambani. The land was picked up for Rs 21.05 crore, while the prevailing market value of the land at the time was around Rs 150 crore, reportedly. The 'Antilia' cost between USD 1 and 2 billion.

The headline-grabbing building was executed by two US architecture firms -- Perkins & Will designed it while Leighton Holdings constructed it - who were consulted after Nita Ambani liked the contemporary Asian interiors at New York’s Mandarin Oriental which was designed by them. The on-site work started in 2006 after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation approved the plan in 2003. Initiated by Leighton Asia, the property was completed by B.E. Bilimoria & Company Ltd.. The interior design uses the shapes of the lotus and the sun.

Mukesh Ambani and his family made 'Antilia' home in 2012. Though the housewarming ritual was done in November 2010, news reports speculated that the India Inc tycoon delayed it to ward off "bad luck". In June 2011, around 50 well-known pandits were invited to 'Antilia' to conduct a few pujas and look into the vastu issues reportedly.

The top six floors of the South Mumbai high-end mansion, which is the world's second-most expensive property after Buckingham Palace, have been set aside as the private full-floor residential area for the family members. The Ambani residence has 9 high-speed elevators designated for different floors, staff and guests.

'Antilia' has everything a person needs for luxury, entertainment and relaxation. It also has a 50-seat theatre, terrace gardens, a snow room that has snowflakes emerging from the walls, a temple, dance studio, three helipads, swimming pools, spas, a health centre. What more could one ask for, we ask!

Not just a sprawling residential area with a high entertainment quotient, 'Antilia' also is home to around 600 staff that work for Ambani at their home. Apart from this, the massive tower also has six floors dedicated only to cars that the family owns, including Ambani's Rs 5 crore Maybach. According to reports, the garage has enough space to accommodate 168 cars. The Ambanis also have their own car service station inside 'Antilia'.

No wonder ‘Antilia’ is a glamorous thing to look at and also an architectural wonder. However, it has also received sharp criticism from people, including another billionaire and business tycoon Ratan Tata, who wondered why Ambani wants to live in “the opulence of a billion-dollar home”. During his 2011 interview with The Times newspaper of London, Tata said that the person who lives in that tower should be concerned about what he sees around him and (ask) can he make a difference. Expressing his concern over the rich-poor gap, Tata had said that India needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways to mitigate the hardship that people have.