Who is Thakkar Developers’ Poorvesh Thakkar?

When Poorvesh Thakkar emerged as the bargain buyer of a Midtown office building, the next logical question was: Who is this guy?

The Dallas-based developer had never purchased property in New York before buying the nearly 1 million-square-foot office tower at 135 West 50th Street for $8.5 million and announcing plans for a sweeping office-to-resi conversion project.

Thakkar may be a stranger to New York real estate, but he’s got plenty of experience in the industry — and with legal trouble involving his real estate projects.

The latest lawsuit came on May 11 when Safehold, the land owner of the Midtown Manhattan office tower, sued to eject Thakkar’s Thakkar Developers from the property, claiming the firm failed to meet its obligations under a long-term ground lease, resulting in nearly $28 million in unpaid property taxes, interest and other penalties. That’s in addition to February fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission and multiple recent lawsuits involving Dallas projects.

He’s fighting the latest wave of legal trouble from an unassuming office in the far north Dallas exurb of McKinney. He welcomed The Real Deal into his office, but refused to speak on the record about his business dealings.

His devotion to mysticism and his Indian heritage is evident in his office decor, which includes a statue of Ganesh, the god revered as the remover of obstacles. The Thakkar network of businesses headquartered at the office also employs Poorvesh’s brother Saumil and his sister-in-law Vaishali.

Thakkar immigrated to the U.S. from India as a teen in 1995 and has, since then, lived a number of business lives. Thakkar put himself through college in Memphis while working full-time in call centers, he said. After securing a Microsoft professional certificate as a teenager, he moved to North Texas and found work as an IT specialist in companies including Texas Instruments and eventually CBRE, his last employer.

In addition to Thakkar Developers, his holding company Perfect Group includes a Bollywood film distributor; a South Asian radio network; an insurance business; a tax office; and My EB Visa, an apparently defunct entity intended to help foreign investors gain permanent resident status through the EB-5 program.

Thakkar Developers has had mixed success in North Texas real estate. The firm is selling entitled lots in The Avenue at Allen, its mixed-use development at the intersection of State Highway 121 and Alma Road, and in Mustang Square, a mixed-use project at the intersection of 121 and Rasor Boulevard in Plano. It’s developed some single-family lots in Celina.

The firm planned to develop a hotel in McKinney in the Craig Ranch development, but it sold the land without progressing on the project in 2022 after owning it for four years. The Thakkar Developers website describes plans to transform its movie theater at 8505 Walton Boulevard in Irving into an entertainment hub with games like laser tag and a go-kart track, but renovations have stalled.

The brigade of lawsuits began a few years after Thakkar founded Thakkar Developers in 2016.

There was the group of investors that sued Perfect Group in 2020 in Dallas County District Court, claiming that the Thakkar family used investors’ money to purchase land from themselves and pay their own company excessive fees. The parties settled the suit in 2024.

Last June, a lender sued the Thakkars in New York State Supreme Court, accusing the company of defaulting on a $35.7 million loan for a mixed-use development in Allen. The parties resolved their dispute in July.

In November, a New York lender, Itria Ventures, sued several Perfect Group companies in Collin County District Court, alleging that the Thakkars had defaulted on a loan. The case was resolved the following month.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Poorvesh and his brother Saumil Thakkar with alleged real estate offering fraud in February, claiming the pair misled investors in a Perfect Group real estate fund. The case is tied to the company’s 2020 litigation. The Thakkars haven’t filed a response in the case yet.

In the same month, two Indian investors sued them in Collin County District Court, alleging that the brothers lured them into investing $1 million in an EB-5 hotel project that never materialized. The Thakkars haven’t responded to this suit yet, either.

The Safehold lawsuit strains Thakkars’ strategy of peaceful out-of-court settlement. His legal pivot is already evident in a countersuit he filed against Safehold in New York Supreme Court Wednesday.