Sant Singh Chatwal is better known for his proximity to the rich, powerful and glamorous. But he is also a successful businessman who has built a global hospitality chain from scratch.
He’s a friend of the Clintons. His drinking buddies include America’s top politicians. He openly declares that he’s the man behind the Indo-US nuclear deal. For someone who left India four decades ago and has been living in America for years, he still speaks English with a heavy Punjabi accent and makes an extra effort to stay connected with the city of his origin, Faridkot in Punjab. He has no family left in Faridkot, but his secretary in New York has clear instructions that anybody calling from the town should be put through to him immediately.
Tall, well-past 60, New York-based hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal is a combination of contrasts — a globe-trotting businessman with strong political connections and an earthy Punjabi who enjoys eating sarson ka saag. On this cold January afternoon, he’s also chosen to dress in high contrast. He’s wearing blood red leather shoes with a formal navy blue pinstripe suit.
The owner of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain and Hampshire Hotels and Resorts, the management arm of the New York-headquartered Chatwal Hotels & Resorts, is in India on business. Along with Wyndham Hotels, which has 7,200 hotels around the world, Chatwal intends to open 52 lifestyle hotels in various cities across the country in the next five years. “And in 10 years’ time, we hope to have more than a hundred hotels in India,” he says.
“Chatwal manages over 3,100 rooms in New York alone which is the hotel capital of the world,” says Kapil Chopra, vice-president of Oberoi Hotels, who knows the hotelier well. “New York,” Chopra adds, “is one of the toughest markets in the hotel business but Chatwal has challenged a lot of norms there and made a mark.” The Chatwal group today owns and runs 15 hotels in New York, London, Bangkok and India. Its four-star boutique hotel, The Time, is walking distance from Times Square. Chatwal refuses to reveal his net worth. What he does reveal is that the group has already invested Rs 1,000 crore in India and plans to invest another Rs 2,000 crore to set up the chain of lifestyle hotels.
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Accompanying Chatwal on this hotel-opening spree is his flamboyant older son, Vikram, who once said that he would become the world’s first billionaire Sikh. Since he came of age and entered the business with his father, and, later in 1999, at the age of 28, created the independent group, Vikram Chatwal Hotels, the younger Chatwal has often been found in gossip columns — as the first Sikh model to appear in Vogue; as a playboy who once dated models like Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen after whose name he got a “G” tattooed on his arm; as an actor who starred in films like One Dollar Curry, Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd, Ek Ajnabee, Zoolander and Karma, Confessions and Holi. In June 2006, Forbes (Asia) put him on its cover. More recently, he was spotted kissing Lindsay Lohan. He’s also been called “the Turban Cowboy.”
Addressing a press conference in Delhi to announce the entry of his lifestyle hotels — Dream and Night — into India, Vikram appears more conventional than he does in his pictures where he sometimes has his hair down or his shirt off to reveal his many tattoos. Having turned 40 in November 2011, he’s said that he’s more settled now and clearer about what he wants to do. But the “maverick hotelier”, as even the press release issued by the group describes him, does surface every now and then. For example, at one point he invites everybody present in the hall “to bring your shorts and your bikinis” for the beachside press conference for his hotel in Goa.
“Vikram brought lifestyle into our company,” says the senior Chatwal. And that really is their strength, says Chopra. “Good food, beverages, night clubs, a good bar, plenty of theme parties with lots of models — the Chatwals have domain expertise in that. For a Victoria’s Secret party, they had over 200 models. Their hotels are buzzing, alive.” However, the group’s 151-room Dream hotel in Cochin which opened four years ago hasn’t been able to create such buzz, he adds. “If they want to create and build a brand in India, they will have to start bottom up.” The Chatwals, however, do not intend to create new properties. They want to franchise and manage the hotels, though they might also invest in some properties. Chopra isn’t sure how well this model will work.
Among the Chatwals, while the patriarch of the family manages the business, older son Vikram focuses on lifestyle and design. It’s younger son Vivek who remains the least known. Low-profile and understated, he stands in stark contrast to his very colourful older brother. “Vivek is more back of the house; he is more into finance. Everybody has a different personality. He enjoys what he does,” says Chatwal. “But together, we run a very professional team. Both my sons work for the company; I work for the company, though we own the company. It’s not a Mom and Pop show.”
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Sitting in his huge suite in a Delhi 7-star hotel, Chatwal also speaks about his relationship with former US president Bill Clinton and says it was this relationship which brought “India and America very close”. He also adds that he “spent tonnes of money, time and effort to make sure that the [Indo-US] nuclear deal goes through.”
For a man from a small city in Punjab, Chatwal’s rise has been meteoric. In 1967, he left India for Ethiopia. That’s where Vikram was born. Then in early 1970, he left Ethiopia for Montreal where he set up his first hotel, Bombay Palace. As he expanded his business, he also made inroads into American politics. “I used to spend money on senators and Congressmen,” he says. “Then one morning I thought, there are 500 Congressmen and 100 senators; I should really invest in the future president of the United States. So, in 1988 I invested money in Dukakis [Democratic presidential nominee Michael Stanley Dukakis]. He was supposed to be the president but he lost by a few votes. I next started betting on various presidents. I happened to click with Clinton, not thinking that he would be president.” Vikram once said that in the early ‘90s, his father went bankrupt and had to rebuild from scratch — and he made enough money to pump into the Clintons’ election campaigns.
When Clinton came to India in March 2000, Chatwal accompanied him. “I came with him in Air force One.” The three times Hillary Clinton visited India — as first lady, then Senator and Secretary of State — Chatwal was again in the picture. “And, of course, I came with President Obama,” he says. He also takes credit for the bhangra performed in the White House for the first time in Manmohan Singh’s honour at Obama’s first state dinner.
When Vikram married model, actress and former investment banker Priya Sachdev in 2006, both Clinton and Prime Minister Singh were on the guest list that also included steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, model Naomi Campbell and Prince Nikolaos of Greece. About 600 well-heeled guests from 26 countries were brought to India on chartered planes for the super-opulent Punjabi wedding. Prime Minister Singh was seen congratulating the newly-weds with a bouquet of canary yellow flowers. The marriage wasn’t entirely a success, but it did give rise to some theories about Prime Minister Singh’s relationship with Chatwal. Some said the two knew each other well because their families came from the same village.
Debunking these theories, former Business Standard editor, Sanjaya Baru, who was media advisor to the prime minister in the first term of the UPA government, says, “He [Chatwal] does NOT know the PM ‘well’. This is a canard spread by various people, including himself. He played an important role in getting Hillary Clinton to support the nuclear deal. He is close to the Clintons. That is why he got the Padma [Bhushan] award.” Baru, now director for geo-economics and strategy, International Institute for Strategic Studies, adds, “He is very influential in the US NRI world, so the prime minister chose to be nice to him because we needed NRI help to get the US Congress to support the nuke deal.”
The Padma Bhushan given to Chatwal in 2010 had kicked up a huge controversy. Allegations of criminal complaints against the NRI hotelier surfaced. There were accusations of non-payment of bills, criminal intimidation, and CBI cases against him. But the home ministry issued a statement saying, “As per available reports, there is nothing adverse on record against Mr Chatwal.” Chatwal says the controversy never upset him though he’s done a lot for India.” Speaking of the land of opportunities that India is today, Chatwal says, “I left India 43 years ago to chase the American dream. The other day Vikram said to me, ‘Dad, I feel like moving to India’.” Looking at his son’s glamorous, extravagant track record, that’s a bit difficult to picture.