Why would somebody with an IIT/IIM background throw up a lucrative job in London with a global consulting firm to start a hospitality venture in India? “It is sheer madness,” admits Gaurav Jain, Managing Director and founder of boutique chain resorts, Aamod, though he looks quite happy with his decision.

Gaurav’s personal experience of struggling to find an ideal place to holiday with his family as well as a great interest in tourism is what led him to return to India in 2008 to start Aamod. Also, it was a college dream, he confesses. During his IIM Calcutta days, he and his wife (she is his classmate) put together a hospitality project that they pitched to a bank. The project was rejected but his wife got a job with the bank.

For Aditi Balbir, Managing Director of V Resorts, who too has an MBA (from ISB, Hyderabad) and a McKinsey in her CV, the jump into a hospitality start-up was partly serendipitous and partly because she is a passionate traveller. The venture capital firm she was working with – Bedrock Ventures —incubated V Resorts as a resorts aggregator. But after some time, when they found the venture not going well they asked her to step in. “I also put in some of my own money and took over,” says Aditi, describing how she changed the model totally.

Changing demographics

Gone are the days when only a particular set of people — those with spare cash from other businesses, real estate interests, or big industrial groups — would venture into hospitality. Today, the demographics have changed. There are geeky youngsters like Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo. There are also a host of middle-class entrepreneurs, with absolutely no background in hospitality who are chucking their cushy jobs to enter the space.

Gaurav and Aditi epitomise this new set of entrepreneurs who are bringing in some out of the box thinking into the sector and creating alternative hospitality offerings. What’s common to the two is that they have opted for the more challenging leisure space.

In Gaurav’s case, he has relived his own pain points and created places that are great for family holidays. “When we were in England, and went on holidays we never stayed at a large property. We would stay in a barn conversion, a manor house and such accommodation. Nothing was standardised and yet there was high quality of hygiene and service,” he says. But in India, they were hard pressed to find similar places. There was a gap in product that Gaurav felt he could fill.

Venturing into eco-tourism

Initially, Gaurav invested in creating such properties – the first one an eco-tourism venture in Shogi, near Shimla, and then one in Dalhousie. But after that he chose to go the management route to expand, adding 10 more locations. Currently, Aamod has 12 properties and is now venturing into Sri Lanka. “Our smallest property is four bedrooms and largest is 42 rooms,” he says, pointing to the diversity of portfolio.

In Aditi’s case, V Resorts first started as a resort aggregator but it didn’t work. As she explains, it meant just putting a board on a resort and selling it. In 2014, V Resorts pivoted and became a full fledged management company with everything from a sales and marketing engine to handling operations. “We have a bouquet of services that we offer an owner,” she says.

How V Resorts is different from other management companies, Aditi explains, is that it only handles projects that are less than 30 rooms. “We have busted the myth that a small property cannot make money,” she says.

She, like Gaurav, insists there are many gaps in existing products that a player like V Resorts can fill. “The market for short breaks is really picking up and people are all the time looking for places to unwind. That’s the space we operate in and that’s bursting with opportunity,” she says. The name V Resorts came about because every property has a great view. That’s one thing we insist on when we sign a project that the guest should get a lovely view, says Aditi.

Given that scores of people with a lineage in hospitality also run management companies, how do they convince owners to go with them rather than with the others?

“The space is so big and growing so fast. We are not competing with each other,” insists Gaurav. “Earlier, it was a problem identifying properties,” says Aditi. “Now owners come to us and we have a ready funnel with 20 leads at any given time.”

The biggest challenge

Although occupancies have been a good 60 per cent, Gaurav says his biggest challenge is customer acquisition and he is now coming up with a membership scheme to drive occupancies. “We have trialled a boutique club,” he says. Since he doesn’t have the scale, he is tying up with similar resorts outside the chain. “Currently, we have 200 members and hope to scale up to 5,000,” he says. Membership costs ₹2.5 lakh for 10 years.

Aditi is innovating on service through technology and an app. Every guest at a V Resorts can use an app to order.

When it comes to holidays, Gaurav points that India is not a mature market unlike Europe where people plan even their short breaks months in advance. But what he and Aditi are doing is to create plenty more options for the last minute vacation seeker.

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