A member of the prominent Singhania family, he is well-known as a textile magnate, having been chairman and managing director of the Raymond Group from 1980–2000.
He did not enjoy the subjects of commerce and economics as a student, and only came to appreciate them later in life when he was teaching postgraduate management classes at the JBIMS.
He also expanded it into an industrial conglomerate, taking it from solely a woolen textile manufacturer to also producing synthetic fabrics, denim, steel, files, and cement.
[17][18] The prior record holder Brian Milton and then-Minister-of-State Sheila Dikshit met him on the tarmac in Delhi to give their congratulations.
[18] Singhania said the most difficult part of the journey for him was flying between Crete and Alexandria across the Mediterranean Sea; he has a fear of deep water, and flew that leg wearing a life jacket and with a can of shark repellent in his lap.
When he got bored in the air, he would pass the time by carrying on pretend conversations with a photo of his two-year-old granddaughter Ananya.
[18][16] He and his American co-pilot Daniel Brown won the gold medal in an international around-the-world air race held by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 1994, to mark its 50th anniversary.
[20][21] They made a flight time of 56 hours and 4 minutes, passing through nine countries in 23 days, leaving from and returning to Montreal.
[20] Singhania holds the world record for altitude in a hot air balloon as of 2023, about 69,000 ft, which he set in November 2005 at the age of 67.
[22][23] He flew with a balloon as tall as a 22-storey building and equipped with 18 burners, travelling in a pressurized aluminium capsule in place of the traditional basket to ward off high-altitude hypoxia.
[22] Liftoff was from a racecourse in Mumbai, accompanied by much fanfare—there was a brass band playing, a crowd of hundreds of spectators to see him off, and international media there to report.
[24][25] Aloft he encountered temperatures as low as -93 °C, "screamed quite loudly" according to him when he broke the record, then returned to the ground near the village of Panchale in Nashik district, in the space of about five hours total.
[22][26] The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale verified his record using an altimeter, GPS, and barograph which were attached to the capsule and sealed in advance to rule out tampering.
As part of the development agreement, all the tenants, including Singhania, were promised flats following the renovations at the rate of ₹9000 per sq.
[29] In 2017, the judge on Singhania's lawsuit requested that the two of them try to work things out within the family before pursuing the case further, noting that he felt the matter rightfully should not have required court resolution.
[29] Singhania wrote the book An Angel in the Cockpit, an account of his journey from the UK to India on a microlight aircraft in 1988.
[31] A warm review in The Tribune said that he "[accepts] his follies and foibles," keeping a "mostly reflective" tone, and that his "achievements go beyond the imagination" while "the missteps make him as vulnerable as any ordinary man.