Hoteliers of India
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Pioneers of the Indian hotel industry
Famous Indian hoteliers
Captain Nair, Biki Oberoi, RK Krishna Kumar & Habib Rehman: Meet the grand old men of hotel industry
Suman Layak May 26, 2013
Like the Indian cricket team's batting geniuses, the Indian hotel industry also has its Fab Four — industry legends who are leaving their mark on the hotel industry much like Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman have done in cricket.
The Fabulous Four
For these four hoteliers the past 12 months have been crucial. CP Krishnan Nair or Captain Nair, 91, who founded the Leela chain in 1987, retired in February 2013. Prithviraj Singh Oberoi, often better known as PRS or Biki, a second-generation hotelier, handed over the CEO's mantle at EIH Ltd (formerly East India Hotels, which owns the Oberoi brand) in January 2013 at 83. RK Krishna Kumar, 74, the man who took on the challenge of managing The Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL, which owns the Taj brand) after Ajit Kerkar's exit, will retire as the company's vice-chairman in July 2013. It might be unfair to call Krishna Kumar a hotelier only, but his stamp on the Taj brand is likely to endure the longest.
Sahibzada Syed Habibur Rehman
And there is Sahibzada Syed Habibur Rehman or Major Rehman, of ITC Ltd, who after retiring in 2009 at 65, returned to the ITC board as a non-executive director in August 2012. Youngest among the industry veterans, Rehman's re-induction in the ITC board serves the thesis that there is something about veteran hoteliers that the Indian hotels industry finds indispensable. After all, Biki Oberoi continues to be executive chairman of the company; Nair as chairman emeritus attends office every day; and Krishna Kumar is not going away too far either, but more of that in a while.
Nothing But the Best
Habib Rehman, at 68, balks at the 'youngest' tag and is quick to point out that his 35 years of experience in the industry is much longer than either that of Nair (who started Leela at 65) or Krishna Kumar (who started managing IHCL 15 years back). Rehman's journey as a hotelier from an army man has seen him in charge of the ITC Hotels chain since 1994. Inducted into the company by Ajit Haksar who led ITC in the '70s, Rehman formed a lasting partnership with current chairman Yogi Deveshwar, who led the ITC's then subsidiary ITC Hotels at one point before going on to head ITC Ltd.
Deveshwar's faith in Rehman enabled the latter to mould the hotels chain the way he wished to. "My interest in food and hotel designing is well known. Our strategy to differentiate ITC Hotels was to be the best in Indian cuisines and among the finest in the world for others," Rehman says. His contribution to foods at ITC Hotels is so detailed that even today young members of ITC's staff in one of its Mumbai hotels refer to "Major Rehman" as the real guy behind the menu. He introduced legendary chef Imtiaz Qureshi to ITC and started the Dum Pukht and Peshawri chain of restaurants along with many others covering global and Indian cuisines. Rehman's imprint is also there in the way ITC's large hotels were built. "This was the first group that said it wanted to begin with a chain of hotels," Rehman says.
Through the '80s and '90s Rehman worked to establish the ITC brand of hotels as a comparable peer — if not better than the Taj and Oberoi chains.
Live Life, King Size
CP Krishnan Nair
In another part of India another man was doing something similar. CP Krishnan Nair, or Captain Nair, who also had an army background, thinks Rehman is a "fine gentleman". Nair's early life was spent in selling textiles in his other company named Leela Lace — Leela being his wife's name. He has been a colourful businessman, and if you want to know about his disruptive techniques, you should watch Shahid Kapur-Anushka Sharma-starrer Badmaash Company.
"It is inspired by my life," Nair claims. At 65, Nair started The Leela in Mumbai near the international airport terminal in Sahar where there were no hotels; and then went on to build a chain of eight hotels. He has since handed over the reins to his two sons. Eight more hotels are about to be launched and another eight are being planned, including a management contract for one in Dubai. "All my granddaughters have been trained in hotel management and now they do not want to get married," he says with a poker face. However, piled up debt of some Rs 4,600 crore (as of March-ended quarter) has compelled the group to consider the option of selling some properties.
That burden, however, is unlikely to alter Nair's flashy and grandiose lifestyle. That's the only way he knows. Around 15 years back, on Subhash Chandra Bose's centenary, his daughter Anita Bose Pfaff stayed at a Leela Hotel during her visit. "I brought two elephants to welcome her. An elephant took the garland from my hand and put it around her. She was so surprised she didn't leave the porch of the hotel for 15 minutes," Nair says.
Nair has known the veterans of the industry closely. "Biki Oberoi has stayed here at the Leela a few times when returning from abroad," Nair says. He remembers how during a dinner at the Leela he had requested Oberoi to start an association only for hoteliers. "Biki asked me: 'Can we all ever join hands and be united?' I said: 'Biki, if you start it everyone will join. I will join you'," Nair says. The Hotels Association of India was started in 1996 and Nair says he requested Krishna Kumar to join up too, and Kumar agreed.
Friends Indeed
Nair and Krishna Kumar go back a long way as Nair was friends with Krishna Kumar's father. When Krishna Kumar took over as managing director of IHCL in 1998 after a stint at Tata Tea, Nair was one of his friends in the city of Mumbai. "But he is a very reserved man, very quiet," says Nair, "unlike Rehman who likes to talk." Nair threw a party for Krishna Kumar's son Ajit Krishna Kumar (also working with Tata Sons now) at the Leela after Ajit's wedding. "Ratan Tata came and stayed the whole evening," Nair says.
Biki Oberoi
There was a time when Biki Oberoi's father Rai Bahadur MS Oberoi wanted to take over the Leela, in the early nineties — the Leela had just one hotel at the time. Nair says: "I wanted a marketing alliance but they wanted a joint venture. I insisted that my son Vivek, who I have trained in the hotel industry, must run the hotel; they offered to make him vice-president but I did not agree and that was that." There is a little sub-plot in the story between Nair, Oberoi and Rehman. ITC Ltd today holds a 14.98% stake in the Oberoi-promoted EIH Ltd. It also holds 13.07% in Hotel Leelaventure Ltd. ITC chairman Deveshwar has often said these are defensive buys, designed to prevent a foreign chain from acquiring these companies.
However, the Oberois actually welcomed Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) into the company as a shareholder by selling it some of their stake. RIL today holds 18.5% in EIH Ltd. Nair has also said that if necessary he too would ask Ambani to play the white knight for Leela. The Inheritors of Legacies
Biki Oberoi and RK Krishna Kumar both took over from legendary hoteliers at their organisations. MS Oberoi is known to have attended office even when in his late 90s. He built the chain with borrowed money and by thinking on his feet after starting out as a clerk at a hotel, keeping a tab of coal purchases. PRS Oberoi, his second son, although trained for the industry, took a while to warm up to the hotels business. "Biki was really not interested in the business till he was 50. Most of the time he was abroad," says Anil Madhok, who worked with the Oberois for almost two decades and now runs his own Sarovar Hotels chain. "Then he started working and often up to two in the morning. I once asked him why are you working so late, and he said he had to make up for the first 50 years when he did little," Madhok says. Oberoi is credited with rewriting the luxury scene in the hotel industry in India with the Raj Vilas in Jaipur, Udai Vilas in Udaipur and Vanya Vilas in Ranthambore where he went on to build palaces instead of acquiring old ones.
Oberoi is all about details. He goes into the smallest of aspects of a hotel when it is being built and is likely to know almost everything in the plan. "He is great when reading a drawing and his style is very understated," Madhok adds. He contrasts Oberoi with Leela's Nair here — whilst Nair is prone to be flashy, Oberoi is more likely to opt for straight lines and colours like white. "Both the styles have their market in India," he says. PRS Oberoi told ET sometime back: "I often say the devil is in the detail. I use that expression very often." Madhok also points out how when The Oberoi at Nariman Point, now styled as Trident, was built by MS Oberoi, it had brass work all over the lobby and in the rooms, much inspired by Indian jewellery. "After Biki took over it was slowly done away with," he says. "Hundreds of people would just walk into the lobby from the Marine Drive to look at it. We tried to stop them in the first few days, but then Rai Bahadur said let the people see the hotel lobby and just cordon off the elevators. He said the novelty would wear off in a few days and that is what happened. But many years later when Biki built the new Oberoi wing at Mumbai, the lobby was built on the second level to discourage such curious entries," remembers Madhok. Managing Change
RK Krishna Kumar
Madhok says Oberoi's style contrasted that of RK Krishna Kumar — KK, as he is often called, would not be into the details of the hotel. Incidentally, both men personally supervised the rebuilding of the Oberoi Trident and the Taj Mahal in 2009 after the Mumbai terror attacks, staying on site for months.
But Krishna Kumar's biggest challenge at IHCL was on the people front. When he was brought in from Tata Tea (now Tata Global Beverages) after Ajit Kerkar left, Krishna Kumar had a rebellion on his hands — almost three-fourth of the staff was against him, so strong was the loyalty to Kerkar. As many seniors left, Krishna Kumar set off in two ways to deal with the problem — he hiked salaries in a big way and also brought in his own men into the hotel. In an interview to ET in 2009, Krishna Kumar had said: "Those were times when there were fewer hotel rooms than needed and when a customer was given a room it was more like a favour. We wanted to completely change that around and make the Taj customer centric. We exited from many properties, outside India — in NY, Chicago, DC; there were huge debts outside India which the earlier management had to perforce take to make acquisitions. We cleared all that and shrunk back and made sure that our internal operations were immeasurably strengthened."
With Ratan Tata's support Krishna Kumar invested in the Indian hotels and renovated them. But he was not really a hotelier, he never looked into the details of the colour of the table cloth or paint on the walls — consultants were brought in for all that. Something, that Madhok says, was unheard of at the Oberoi: "There were so many experts in-house." Tata insiders indicate that when Krishna Kumar handed over the reins to Raymond Bickson, who came in as MD & CEO in July 2003, he retained a significant amount of control on the management of the company. After all, the vice-chairman of IHCL was also the second-most powerful man at Tata headquarters Bombay House; today he has a presence on the powerful Tata Trusts and is also a shareholder and director in Ratan Tata's private venture RNT Associates.
An Industry in Transition Before the Fab Four, there were two other veterans in the Indian hotels industry: MS Oberoi and Ajit Kerkar. Kerkar still runs Tulip Star. Habib Rehman is quick to point out that the veterans came from different industries. While only Oberoi was trained in hospitality, Nair and Rehman had army backgrounds and Krishna Kumar came in from tea.
Camellia Punjabi
Another legendary hospitality professional Camellia Punjabi, who was part of Kerkar's core team, was a part of the Tata Administrative Services and moved to IHCL from Tomco (a maker of soaps and detergents, which Ratan Tata sold to Hindustan Lever). Today, the scene is changing again. International hotel chains like the Marriott, Accor, Hyatt and Four Seasons have all moved into India. Rehman says the Indian hotels industry is also now rich in professionals. "In China, the foreign majors as well as local chains would always have an expat general manager managing the hotels. In India, the GMs are mostly Indian in both local and foreign chains. Indian managers are now working abroad too."
So will professionalism ensure shorter stints for veteran hoteliers in future? Nair disagrees; he feels veterans will continue to play a role, and he sees his sons Vivek and Dinesh as well as his grandchildren managing the group in future. And he himself will continue to advise on crucial decisions like new properties and hotels; he is already planning a third set of eight hotels for Leela.
PRS Oberoi could not speak to ET Magazine for this story as EIH Ltd is opening three hotels across the world and, at 83, he is travelling to all the locations. Rehman too is very much in the thick of things. "ITC practices a three-tiered model of governance with the board as the supervisory body and the executive core vested with the corporate managing committee and businesses run by CEOs. Obviously I would not be on the board if no contribution was expected from my field of expertise and other experiences." Clearly, the Fab Four aren't ready to walk into the sunset just yet.
