Drive down Anna Salai, Chennai’s 400-year-old artery, towards the Adyar River, and you will see a 200,000 sq. ft. office building under construction next to the Little Mount Metro Station. When completed, it will serve as the headquarters of Equitas Small Finance Bank.
For over four years, Equitas, the story goes, had been scouting for a piece of land for its headquarters. It was particular about the location—it had to be on or near Anna Salai, because being on Chennai’s most important road mattered.
But, given that it is one of the oldest and most developed parts of the city, land was not easy to come by. That is until an intermediary introduced the bank to realty company Arihant Foundations and Housing Ltd, in 2023. A few months before that introduction, Arihant, Chennai’s only listed real estate company, had partnered with the owners of a timber depot—the large land parcel, over 40,000 sq. ft., sat right on Anna Salai and had been in the family since pre-independence days.
In a few short months, Arihant sold the plot to Equitas for ₹300 crore, in what was one of the city’s largest end-use commercial purchases in recent times. Icing the cake, Arihant is also building Equitas’ swanky new office.
If you have no connection to Chennai, chances are you have never heard of Arihant.
When the 2025 Grohe-Hurun India Real Estate 150 list (ranks most successful companies by value) was announced in August, it stated that Arihant, incorporated in 1995, led the valuation growth chart of realty stocks with an extraordinary 1,086% jump to ₹1,400 crore in June 2025, over the year-ago period.
The stock surge followed a sharp increase in revenue growth in FY24 and FY25, coupled with rapid growth in net profit (see chart). However, the preceding years saw Arihant’s results yo-yoing, up one year, down the next. Its stock price mostly remained under ₹100 between 2010 and 2023. It closed at ₹1,060 on 23 September.
While Arihant’s revenue of ₹221 crore is a drop in the ocean compared to larger national counterparts, such as DLF, Godrej Properties and Prestige Estate, it has suddenly begun punching above its weight. What changed? Therein hangs a tale.
When Navratan Lunawath, whose family had moved from Rajasthan to Chennai in 1963 to set up a finance business, got into the real estate market in 1986 through partnerships under the name Arihant, the scale was modest.
While shaping many of Chennai’s old neighbourhoods, such as Kilpauk, T-Nagar, Koyambedu, Egmore and Teynampet, with their mid-to-premium-end residential apartments and mid-sized commercial buildings, Arihant kept things manageable, steering clear of large-scale projects.
That changed in 2008, when Arihant decided to develop a residential township, something Chennai had not witnessed until then, on a 70-acre land parcel in Perambur, to the north of the city. Not having executed such an ambitious project before, Arihant opted for a partner. “For Arihant, as a brand, it was a proud moment when the second largest developer in the country chose to partner with us,” said Arun Rajan, CEO of Arihant.
Then, of course, disaster struck, as Unitech got enmeshed in controversies and court cases. Suddenly, Arihant was on its own. “The Chennai market knew only us. Buyers had put in money because our name was associated with the development,” said Arun Rajan, CEO of Arihant. “We took on the onus of completing the development on our own.”
