You just talked about Indian designer labels being acknowledged globally. There are many more luxury brands from India getting ready to go global. What kind of a mindset change do these brands need to appeal to international audiences?

Each brand needs to find its own niche, strategy, and execution plan. If your purpose is to be best in class and you want to create a space for yourself in that positioning, you also need the means. If you don’t have it, you will not get there. The India of yesterday didn’t provide you the means, but the India of today provides you the means. There is private equity available, there is venture capital available. There are large business houses that are willing to put the money behind people who have the talent, the drive, and the vision to make something out of it. You need the combination of all three and the ultimate goal to be the best in class. Then you can do the test within your own country and spread globally.

Different brands have different strategies and different markets have different entry barriers. Ultimately, the art of execution is the most important. You can have the best idea in the world, but if not executed properly it will not work well. You can have the best product in the world, but if not executed well it will not work.

Picking up the right market, the right business model, [and] the right strategic initiatives is the way forward. We will have a minimum of five luxury brands if not 10 that will make it to the global ranking in consumer businesses.

Soon after you took over, you embarked on the journey of reinventing Taj and other brands. Though Taj was always a symbol of Indian luxury, it did not appeal to the younger audience. What did you do to regain the glory of the Taj brand?

I don’t agree with Taj not appealing to the younger generation. That’s not correct. Taj has always been dil se (from the heart) and people have stayed with us for generations. We made a few bold moves (launching business hotel brand, Vivanta and value brand, Ginger) in the early 2000s and then the world turned upside down — there was the global financial crisis and thereafter the backbone of Taj in those days, the Taj Mahal Palace in Colaba, fell victim to the 26/11 attack. That put us in a loss-making spiral from 2008-17.

During this journey when we were short of money, a lot of Taj’s classic properties (for reasons that may be relevant at that point of time because they didn’t see the required revenue contribution) got downgraded to other brands (the likes of Holiday Village in Goa, Fort Aguada Goa and Fisherman’s Cove, Mahabalipuram). The first job was how to upgrade them back to the old glory, which together with the 20-30 hotels we signed, immediately brought Taj to a 75-plus portfolio. These hotels started performing and our belief grew that we could do more and better. That took us to the next big leap—today, Taj has a portfolio of close to 100 hotels, it is tripling of [the] portfolio, despite two years of Covid. Taj was able to create that magic and become… more than a backbone, like a pillar that created a platform for the success of other brands.

The other bold move we took was instead of reinventing our iconic F&B brands each time we opened a hotel, why not make them the ambassadors of Taj, and also ambassadors of their own brand. So, House of Ming made a journey to London. House of Ming also became a restaurant in Patna or Bhopal. Similarly, we introduced new concepts and polished the old ones. The reimagination of The Chambers happened. The Chambers always had the who’s who of India, but over the years somehow it had got stuck in time. So, we redeveloped The Chambers in Delhi, doubled its size. We added The Chambers at the West End in Bengaluru, in Hyderabad, London, and Dubai. We are now renovating The Chambers in Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, that will create a new luxury brand within the brand. The Chambers was always the most recognised and respected private membership club supporting Taj, but it was never a brand in itself.

So, you need to keep reimagining and reinventing yourself with time to address the needs of your consumer, ⁽³⁾without changing your core. The core is what your forefathers created, they gave you the culture and the core includes your values.

The Chambers

Luxury is in its infancy in India, but is growing, says IHCL’s Puneet Chhatwal