Local food, global ambition

HOSPITALITY: The Indage group is raring to go global with its restaurant ambitions, and it's not just about the wine, they say.

Wine and food are far from strange bedfellows and the Indage group is keen to cement that. Not content with being market leaders in the Indian wine industry, the Indage group "" that controls Champagne Indage "" seven years ago decided on a course of forward integration into hospitality by setting up a separate division "" Indage Hotels.

Since then the company has experimented with restaurant and nightclub brands that spanned cuisines and wallet size. With the dust settling, the company will focus on only the sustainable.

Consolidation period notwithstanding, they've just signed an MoU with the government in Virginia, USA, to set up five restaurants in the state at an investment of $500,000, within this year.

Says Vickrant Choughule, managing director, Indage Hotels, "Richmond, Virginia, unlike New York or Las Vegas, is representative of America and its people. Plus, there's only a small Indian community there, so if we can make a go of it here, we can make it anywhere," he says.

The restaurants "" Indian in essence "" will belong to a single, as yet unnamed brand that will then be rolled out across the country. "Indian flavours are now gaining acceptance in the US, so we will introduce them gently," says Choughule.

Across the Atlantic, Choughule will have a decidedly easier task at promoting the two restaurants he's scheduled to open in London by the end of this year.

Unlike in Virginia, where the company will take on the leases of existing restaurants and refurbish and re-brand them, in the UK the company is buying out two "very prominent" Indian restaurants. While in Virginia the target audience will be mid-market, the London restaurants are upmarket.

Back home, the group has whittled its interests down to four key brands spread across 21 operational outlets "" the two nightclub brands Athena and Prive, the franchised South African fast food brand Nando's, and wine bar Ivy. Choughule suggests the company will be making an investment of Rs 35 crore in 2007-08 for expansion of these brands.

In the absence of alcohol advertising, forward integration can be a viable branding tool but Choughule clarifies Indage Hotels has attained sufficient size (revenue projections of Rs 110 crore in 2007-08) to make growth decisions independent of the group's wine business. Nevertheless, the restaurants will provide breadth of distribution for its wine exports.

Earlier this month, Indage Hotels unveiled their first wine resort and spa property, Tiger Hills Resort, near Nashik, while also setting up a second, more ambitious luxury project adjoining their mother winery in Naraygaon. Next up are resorts in Himachal Pradesh and then Karnataka, to be operational by 2008.

It doesn't end there. Dubai, too, is on Choughule's radar, and he's convinced the Prive brand of nightclubs will travel well to the UK. Choughule certainly has enough on his plate, and he's going to be making sure you do too.