Small flavours

When most Delhi restaurateurs are expanding to the northern and western parts of the city in search of crowds (read profits), Dhiraj Arora, managing director, Mahima Caps (Pvt) Ltd, is glued to the south despite spiralling rental costs.

Arora is adding two more restaurants to his existing two at the cost of Rs 1.5 crore. Coming up in Vasant Vihar is a trattoria-style, 50-seater, Italian restaurant in June. By December Mahima Caps, a company with interests in packaging materials, will also open an oriental restaurant in the city. Currently, Arora owns Shalom, a lounge bar and No Escape, a pub in the city.

Is Arora on an expansion drive because the life of a restaurant is getting shorter with increased competition? "The idea is to earn from restaurants and invest in restaurants. Typically, a good restaurant can earn about Rs 2 crore a year," he says. With this figure in mind, Arora plans to open five restaurants by next year to achieve a turnover of Rs 10 crore.

After his first experience in the restaurant business with No Escape that opened in 2002 in central Delhi, Arora realised that he was in the wrong place. Or, at least, "the product did not match the clientele".

However the joint managed to break even in the first 11 months. "The crowd that listens to hiphop and house music was all in south Delhi. Also, owing to parking problems we did not attract as many corporate clients as we would have liked to," he says. So last October, Arora opened Shalom in south Delhi.

His new strategy is to look at smaller places (50-seaters) in posh localities rather than 100 cover restaurants in business districts. "The first rule in the Delhi restaurants' success book is to always make a place look busy and crowded. It's a peculiarity of the city where people would rather wait for a table than go to a half-empty restaurant," says Arora.

He has roped in his old team Manu and Sonia Mohindra as food consultants and Sumeet Nath as the interior designer. "Mahima Caps is also thinking of setting up a resort modelled on a Mediterranean village in Rajasthan." he says.