Jacob & Co Branded Residences: Punjab's First at ₹2,500 Crore

Jacob & Co branded residences have arrived in India. The Geneva watchmaker and high-jewellery house has partnered with Punjab-based developer GB Realty on a nine-acre residential project in Mohali, valued at between ₹2,400 and ₹2,500 crore, roughly 290 million US dollars. It is the first branded residence development in Punjab, and it puts a global luxury name in a city that the branded segment has never reached before.

Six towers on nine acres

The scheme is planned as six towers on a nine-acre parcel in Mohali, part of the Tricity conurbation that also takes in Chandigarh and Panchkula. Two of the towers are being marketed under the Salman Khan Residences name, an association with one of Bollywood's most recognisable figures, while the remaining inventory carries the Jacob & Co design signature. The project was formally unveiled this week, with Salman Khan associated with the launch.

The financial scale is what makes the story notable. At ₹2,400 to ₹2,500 crore, this is not a boutique experiment but one of the larger branded residential commitments announced in northern India, and it is being led by a regional developer rather than one of the national listed players that usually carry such projects.

Why a watchmaker is building homes

Jacob & Co is not a hotel group, and it does not run residences as an operating business in the way that Aman, Four Seasons or St. Regis do. The brand's model is licensing: its aesthetic, its material language and its name are applied to a development delivered and sold by a partner. The best-known example is Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co Residences in Dubai, a supertall tower that took the jeweller's signature into the skyline and became one of the most photographed residential addresses in Business Bay.

That model matters for buyers. A branded residence from a hotel operator typically comes with rental management, a reservations system and a loyalty programme. A branded residence from a fashion or jewellery house comes with design authority, exclusivity of name and, usually, a much thinner service layer. Both are legitimate; they answer different questions. The first is about income, the second is about identity and scarcity.

The Salman Khan effect

The association with Salman Khan is a distribution strategy as much as a design one. In the Indian market, celebrity-branded real estate has repeatedly proven able to move inventory faster than the underlying micro-market would suggest, particularly in the premium and luxury tiers where buyers are making an emotional decision alongside a financial one. Two towers carrying his name give the project a marketing engine that a foreign watch brand alone would struggle to reproduce in Punjab.

What it signals about the branded market

For a decade the branded residences map was drawn along three lines: American gateway cities, European resort destinations, and the Gulf. The last two years have redrawn it. Branded supply is now expanding into secondary cities where a large domestic wealthy population exists but international hotel brands have not yet arrived in residential form. Mohali is a clear example: not Mumbai, not Delhi, but a city of over a million people inside a metropolitan area of several million, with a manufacturing base, an IT corridor and a well-established professional class.

The economics support it. Branded residences typically sell at a premium to comparable unbranded stock in the same city, often quoted between 25 and 35 per cent globally, and developers use the brand to compress sales timelines and support pricing on the upper floors. In a market where land is cheaper than in the gateway cities, that premium is easier to defend on absolute ticket size, which is exactly why tier-two India is now attractive to licensors.

What to watch from here

Three numbers will define whether this becomes a template or a one-off. The first is the launch price per square foot against the best unbranded stock in Mohali. The second is the payment structure and delivery timeline, since branded projects in new geographies tend to slip on handover. The third is absorption at the top of the stack, where the largest units sit and where the brand premium is most expensive to justify.

For international buyers watching the branded segment, the Mohali project is worth noting less as a purchase opportunity and more as a marker: the moment a Swiss jeweller puts its name on six towers in Punjab is the moment the category stops being a coastal and capital-city story.

Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co Residences in pictures