Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - HT Navi Mumbai Live
“Listening to music while I work distracts me”
devotion to his hotels that he never took his eye off the ball. He would read every guest comment card and if the negative comments seemed justified, he would haul up his General Managers and write to guests to offer apologies or make-good stays.
All top hoteliers have to be company executives as well. There is a bottom-line to look after and shareholders to be satisfied. East India Hotels, the company that owns the Oberoi group, is publicly listed. So Biki had to calculate his risks and ensure that he did not disappoint his investors. And yet, he took incredible risks. He closed down the Delhi Oberoi for two years and spent hundreds of crores on re-building it from inside. I can think of nobody else who would shut down a profitable property for that long only because he believed that a hotel that opened in 1965 did not fit in with his vision of Oberoi Hotels.
Nor has anyone else taken anything like the chance he took with the Vilases. The properties would only make money if guests paid rates that were higher than had ever been charged in India. Otherwise they would drag the company down to bankruptcy. But Biki got those rates, first from foreign visitors and then, during the pandemic, from Indian guests who got hooked on the Oberoi conception of luxury.
The Oberoi group is in safe hands. Biki’s low profile nephew Arjun, who takes over as executive chairman, has spent decades conceiving of and building new hotels. Within the company, he is well-respected and it is said that he knows every brick of every hotel he has built. And Biki’s son, the sharp but self-effacing Vikram, who continues as CEO, has his father’s flair for luxury with an approach that is even more staff and guestfocussed than Biki’s.
So the Oberois will go from strength to strength. But I will miss Biki. And I do hope he continues to contribute to the company he reinvented.
The views expressed by the columnist
are personal
Looking at Amit Aggarwal the designer today, you’d never guess that the younger son of an engineer and a homemaker, Amit always excelled in his studies. “I would rush to tuitions after school. Afternoons and evenings were spent with the colony dogs and making homes for litters,” he says. Forever drawing in his colouring books or on the walls of his house, he was nine when he realised he wanted to do something with clothes. At 18, he left Mumbai for Delhi to study at NIFT.
Today, Amit is famed for his modern, unique designs seen on red carpets. Personally, you’ll only see him in casual oversized black clothes, as he likes “air between my skin and fabric. My arms need to be free to move, drape, sketch and hug!“
What is your favourite
breakfast in bed?
An espresso with buttered toast.
What is on your bedside table?
A tumbler of water & melatonin strips.
Do you remember your dreams?
Rarely. But I could draw the ones
I do frame by frame.
BEDSIDE STORIES
Kapoor; they ended up wearing the same outfit, during Morphe.
Meeting Mehr Jessia in 1993, at a trade show in Mumbai. I didn’t wash my hand for a whole week where she signed it!
1. I am a private person to the world, but to my partner and family my life’s an open book. I share every little detail with them.
2. I have a very graphic sense of humour. I am actually superbly humorous.
3. I am a street food addict! It’s dipping my fingers into food that makes me weak in the knees.