Jay Singh, one half of the team that has brought Hard Rock Cafe to India, is also a design aficionado, he tells Archana Jahagirdar
As Jay Singh walks through Hard Rock Cafe in Delhi, the staff treats him like one more customer. They are polite, but Singh gets no special treatment. That, to Singh, is the hallmark of how professionally run the place is. He says, when I remark on his lack of airs and refusal to be treated as a proprietor, “The business has to be bigger than the proprietors. I don’t want to be the face of the brands. When you are looking to scale up, you can’t be the face of the brand. When that does happen, then the brand fails.”
Co-founder and joint managing director of JSM Corporation India, Singh, along with partner Sanjay Mahtani, owns the Hard Rock Cafe franchise in India. He says that in the F&B space, “Hard Rock is the most well-known brand. The recall value of the brand was high in India.”
Singh’s association with Hard Rock came about serendipitously. Says Singh, “I met the promoters of Hard Rock through a common friend.” From then to the opening of the first outlet in Mumbai in 2006, Singh has been impressed by “the dedication that the parent company has to the brand. They are so passionate about it.”
Singh’s own passion for the restaurant business bore fruit after his life had taken some other professional twists and turns.
First there was schooling in Switzerland, then a double major from an Ivy League university in the USA, and then a job with an investment firm in New York. If that career trajectory offered no inkling of what Singh would eventually do, his next job was even further removed from what he does today.
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Says Singh, “By 1995 I had decided to move back to India.” He met with Atwood Richards, the world’s largest barter company, and helped them set up their office in Bangalore.
The move back to India had Singh take another momentous decision. He gave up his green card. He says, “I loved Bangalore. It’s a great city and those were exciting times.” But Singh, having returned from New York — possibly the world’s most happening city — realised that what Bangalore lacked was a nightlife.
“On a whim, my wife and I decided to get into the restaurant business,” says Singh. That lead to the birth of 180 Proof. Singh still recalls those days fondly, “We had so much fun with it. We also managed to make some money.” The success of 180 Proof set the ball rolling for Singh’s full-time involvement in the F&B business.
Though still employed by Atwood Richards, Singh and his wife were enjoying the fruits of their success. It was around this time that Singh, along with his father-in-law, won the franchise of KFC and Pizza Hut for north India.
Still restless, Singh had other ideas bubbling in his head. He says, “We wanted to open the McDonald’s of India.” Singh and his wife got into the project enthusiastically, but just six months into it, it became clear that this wasn’t quite their cup of tea. Says Singh, “We realised that we had been way too ambitious. It also became clear that running a fast food chain required a completely different skill set. So we decided to shut shop.”
By 2002, Singh had grown tired of Bangalore and decided to move to Delhi. The couple sold 180 Proof, and, at this point, Singh’s wife opted out of the business altogether. In Delhi, Singh decided to stick to F&B and opened F Bar, which did well. Then he moved to Mumbai, the city where he had lived until he turned 13, and decided to start JSM with Mahtani.
Hard Rock is doing well in Mumbai and Delhi, and Singh is confident that as more and more outlets open, it is bound to do even better. But you are unlikely to find Singh at a Hard Rock — or Shiro, the high-end restaurant he runs in Mumbai, or IndoChine, another JSM-owned outlet. He says, “Having to spend every evening out partying is too much of a high price to pay for work. I go out just once a month.”
When Singh isn’t working, he likes to play with his five-year-old son, and when he and his wife travel, “a lot of time and passion is spent on where to eat”.
The couple also like to weave into their travels visits to sites of great architecture. Says Singh, “I spend time visiting buildings of architectural interest. I am a great fan of the Bombay Gothic style.” Singh’s taste isn’t limited to the Gothic. He also enjoys modern architecture.
“When my wife and I travel,” he says, “we go and see apartments out of interest. I like to see neighbourhoods that are in transition and also have the potential to change.” He mentions TriBeCa in New York as a neighbourhood that has transformed itself. He adds, “We used to live there.” Closer home, he describes Mumbai’s Lower Parel as an area in transition.
Singh has lived a fairly nomadic life for 20 years. Now, he says, Mumbai is likely to be the city he will call home for the rest of his life. He says, “Mumbai has got great energy. Its an amazing city. I like the contrasts that exist in the city.”