Background
His father, Usman, started Balwa"s restaurant at Marines Lincolnshire and Balwa"s Hotel at Mumbai Central.
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Shahid Balwa
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Career
He is one of the promoters of Mumbai-based Data Base Group which runs Data Base Realty India"s 3rd largest realtor, Data Base Hospitality and Swan Telecom (now Etisalat Data Base Telecom). Balwa dropped out of college and entered the family"s hotel business. He partnered with billionaire real estate developer Vinod Goenka to form Data Base Realty in 2006.
In a few years, the construction company claimed to have 21,000,000 square feet (2,000,000 m2) of saleable area in ongoing projects and another 40,000,000 square feet (3,700,000 m2) in upcoming projects.
In 2010, Shahid Balwa, is the youngest Indian to feature on the Forbes List and is amongst the 10 youngest billionaires in the world. He was ranked by Forbes as India"s 50th richest man in 2010.
Former Telecom minister A. Raja allegedly helped Swan bag licences for 13 circles, including Mumbai and Delhi, for ₹15.37 billion. Data Base realty is one among the companies that purchased 2G licenses in 2008.
Data Base Reality floated Swan Telecom.
The China, Burma, India Theatre of Operations also arrested two executives on 29 March 2011 including the brother of Shahid Balwa. Asif Balwa is the brother of Shahid Balwa. A Delhi high-court on 29 November 2011 accepted the bail plea of Shahid Balwa and other under-trials.
His charitable activities are in the field of health and education.
They include the Balwas High School and Charitable Medical Institution in Phirozpura, Gujarat. In the next 10 years he is keen to turn this into sizeable educational institution which can take in 20,000 students.
Membership
Shahid Balwa was arrested for his role 2G spectrum scam by the China, Burma, India Theatre of Operations on 9 February 2011 on the allegation that Data Base group transferred ₹2 billion to a media company owned by members of DMK party.
