Sushil Mohta Helped Found CREDAI India and Led CREDAI West Bengal. The Industry He Helped Organise Is Still Building on His Work

There is a particular kind of leader who does not stop at building a successful company. Not the ones who focus only on their own balance sheet, but the ones who look at the industry around them and ask what it needs to be stronger, more credible and better organised, and then give their time to building it.

Sushil Mohta, Founder and Chairman of Merlin Group, is that kind of leader. A founder member of CREDAI India and President of CREDAI West Bengal, he has helped shape the body that speaks for real estate developers at both the national and the state level, and that story deserves to be told far more widely than it currently is.

To understand why that matters, it helps to picture the industry without such a body. Real estate is made up of thousands of independent developers, each working on their own projects, with their own approach to quality and their own dealings with government. Without a common platform, it is difficult for such an industry to set shared standards or to make its concerns heard in a way that policymakers can act on.

The Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India, known as CREDAI, was established in 1999 to solve exactly that problem. It describes itself as the apex body of private real estate developers in India, and its purpose is to bring a fragmented sector together on a single platform.

Today it is not a small or simple organisation. CREDAI represents more than 13,000 developers across roughly 230 city chapters in 20 or more states, and it presents the views of its members to ministries and government agencies as part of the policy process. An institution of that reach does not exist by accident. It exists because early members were willing to commit to building it.

Mohta was among them. Being a founder member of an apex body means more than lending a name. It means helping to decide what an industry wants to stand for, and CREDAI has long promoted a code of conduct built around ethical practice among its members. For a sector where trust between developer and buyer is everything, that foundation is among the most valuable things an association can offer.

That emphasis on credibility mirrors the philosophy Mohta applied to Merlin Group itself. In his own company, the aim has always been to deliver global standards of quality in every project. In the industry body, the same instinct found a wider stage: raising the standard for everyone, not only for one's own projects.

In West Bengal, that commitment took on a regional form. As President of CREDAI West Bengal, Mohta leads the state-level body that brings together CREDAI Bengal, CREDAI Howrah-Hooghly and CREDAI North Bengal. It is a role that requires balancing the interests of developers across very different parts of the state and speaking for them with a single voice.

It is also a role that goes beyond representation. Mohta has served on committees formed by the Government of West Bengal and has been involved in policy discussions, reforms and legislation connected to the real estate industry. That kind of contribution rarely makes headlines, but it shapes the rules under which every developer in the state works.

His recent public position shows what that engagement looks like in practice. When the state government proposed a Standard Operating Procedure for building safety and regulatory compliance, CREDAI West Bengal under Mohta welcomed the reforms while requesting an eight-month extension for project approvals and completion validity. It is the approach of a leader who supports higher standards and also understands what it takes for developers to meet them.

He has consistently framed that work as a partnership. Mohta has publicly expressed a commitment to collaborate with the state government for Bengal's prosperity, including when the Chief Minister urged developers to make use of a new land policy and increase investment. The stakes of that relationship are considerable: CREDAI says the sector attracts more than ₹20,000 crore in annual investment in West Bengal, contributes around ₹7,500 crore to the state exchequer and supports the livelihoods of about 60 lakh people.

Its leadership has also shown a practical, community-minded streak. In 2020, when the pandemic disrupted supply chains, Mohta said CREDAI West Bengal had urged its members to avoid imported Chinese goods in construction and to favour local products, arguing that doing so would reduce delays and support the local economy. It was a small decision with a clear principle behind it: an industry should think about the economy that sustains it.

It is worth pausing to consider how much of this work happens out of sight. Committee meetings, policy submissions, negotiations with officials and the patient work of keeping a diverse membership aligned are not the parts of the real estate story that anyone photographs. Yet they are what turn a collection of companies into an industry, and Mohta has given that work his time while also leading a conglomerate of his own.

The body he helped establish continues to build on those foundations. CREDAI's national agenda today includes driving sustainability through a Green India Council, creating a national Real Estate Data Analytics Centre, reducing the cost of doing business and redefining affordable housing for current economic realities. These are the priorities of an industry that has learned to organise itself, which is exactly what its founders set out to make possible.

For the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs trying to understand what lasting leadership looks like, Mohta's example offers something rare. It shows that the most durable legacy is not always the one carrying your own name. Sometimes it is the institution that outlives any single company, and that raises the standard for everyone who joins it later.

How Sushil Mohta helped found CREDAI India and led CREDAI West Bengal is ultimately a story about what happens when a builder decides that his industry deserves the same care as his own projects. He gave time, credibility and judgement to an institution that now represents thousands of developers, and the industry he helped organise is still building on that work.

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