With the property market showing little sign of reviving, Britain's housebuilders are travelling farther afield than ever to find buyers. Their latest target: well-to-do Indians looking to buy-to-let in London.

In the ballroom of Bombay's finest hotel last week, scores of middle-class Indians were invited to ponder what was pitched as a near once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the chance to acquire a new-build flat in a block next to Vauxhall Bridge.

Over a gourmet curry buffet, executives from Berkeley Group, the FTSE 250-listed property developer, spoke to potential buyers about how they expected Britain's fundamental undersupply of housing to underpin the market over the long term.

A cadre of sharp-suited estate agents - flown in from London - talked of a “window of opportunity” created by the downturn in British house prices and described the “affluent country town ambience” of Stanmore.

The week-long sales sortie, which also took in Delhi, was the first of its kind in India by a British homebuilder. “It's been hard work, but we're laying the foundations for a long-term effort,” said Simon Halfhide, the director of new homes at Jones Lang LaSalle, the estate agents that is partnering Berkeley in the sub-continent.

“There is a lot of foreign buying in London. The Russians and Saudis have been famously active. But so far India has been relatively untapped ... There are a lot of people in the industry looking over our shoulders to see how we do.”

Ultra-rich Indians have already demonstrated a fondness for British bricks and mortar. Lakshmi Mittal, the billionaire steel baron, owns three properties on London's Kensington Palace Gardens that are said to be worth £440 million.

However, the wealth of India's industrialists may represent only the tip of a growing pyramid. The country is home to the fastest-growing population of dollar millionaires in the world (about 125,000), and JLL reckons that by 2025 nearly 600 million Indians will have sufficient financial means to invest in UK residential property.

The estate agent estimates that Indians will buy between 20,000 and 30,000 UK residential properties over the next decade, at a cost between £10 billion and £15 billion. Indian lenders are already latching on to the idea of providing funds: ICICI and HDFC, the country's leading private-sector banks, took part in the event last week.

The key to profiting from India's economic rise, Berkeley executives suggest, is to court India's aspirational upper middle class, rather than those who, like Mr Mittal, have little left to prove. Mark Griffiths, of Berkeley, said that the builder had its sights on Indian parents who planned to send their children to British universities, as well as pure investors and those who would get a kick out of dropping into conversation how they owned a pad in London.

When the sickly state of Britain's housing market is mentioned, he is adamant: “We are not panicking. We are looking at new markets.”

Berkeley is experimenting in India with two properties that will be completed in the next couple of years. Aquarius House is the property next to Vauxhall Bridge. The developer says that the 14-storey building combined “the perfect location with the ultimate in contemporary sophisticated living”. The brochure features a collection of upwardly mobile types sipping cocktails and driving Bentleys. The flats cost as much as £1 million.

For those on more modest budgets, Berkeley is marketing Stanmore Place. The low-rise apartment block is 12 miles from Central London. Prices start at about £250,000. Part of India's attraction, Mr Halfhide said, was that Indians were typically not as post-code-driven as citizens of some other emerging economies. “The Russians tend to like Belgravia, and you probably wouldn't want to pitch Stanmore at a Saudi,” he said.

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