Appetite for profits

Why is the $350-million London-based shipping company casting its eyes on India's restaurant business? "For prestige rather than profits," claims Ravi K Mehrotra, the Non Resident Indian and founder-chairman of the Foresight Group, which runs a diverse range of businesses from shipping, oil drilling and exploration, to call centres and restaurant ventures in China.

In the spirit of the "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" slogan, Mehrotra has done a swap: he runs four Indian restaurants in China. And earlier this month, he formally launched The Chinese, a Chinese cuisine outlet, in New Delhi's Connaught Place. Created with an investment of Rs 2.5 crore, the restaurant, which had a soft launch in June this year, is said to be close to a break even. Now, The Chinese brand is set to open in other Indian cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and a second outlet in south Delhi "" all for a total investment of Rs 12.5 crore in two years.

Mehrotra, who had kept the expansion plans under wraps, says "I don't believe in inaugurations and laying foundation stones unless the product establishes itself."

But with the restaurant business growing at 40 per cent and more people eating out, the former marine engineer with the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), believes that The Chinese has proved that India is ready to lap up cuisines from diverse regions in China like Urmichi and Guangzhou, which have been put together after testing the tastes of consumers at the restaurant.

The group currently runs three Indian restaurants called the Tandoor in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu in a 71:29 joint venture with the Jin Jian Group of Hotels, a state-owned company that operates 30 hotels in China. The group's fourth restaurant "" The Spice Market "" is located in Shanghai.

Mehrotra entered the hospitality business in 1989 when he was invited by Shanghai's then deputy mayor Zhu Rongji to start Indian restaurants in China.

"Development was rapidly turning Shanghai into an international hub and the state wanted to have the finest international restaurants in town," recalls Mehrotra, who's also lived in Iran for a decade and was an advisor to the Ayotollah regime.

Later, he moved to the UK where he carved out his shipping empire from a "one-room flat in London." Currently, he has offices in the UK, India, China, UAE and Cyprus.

While Mehrotra claims that profits is not the idea behind the hospitality business, he's quite happy with the 25 per cent return on equity from his Chinese restaurant venture and hopes that the Indian division will roll out similar profits.