With some help from her children, The Lalit's new chief presides over a shopping spree - for hotels - of the type the group has never seen before.
Everything is magnified when you face a tragedy,” says 
, Chairperson and Managing Director, Bharat Hotels Limited, talking about the most painful time of her life. “They say God gives you the strength to cope but it’s actually such a rush of adrenalin that all your senses become totally fine-tuned, your instincts get honed so that you are able to do things that you couldn’t have ordinarily done,” she says. It’s a perspective on coping from someone who has coped. And well, says Anoothi Vishal.
We are at lunch, talking, amongst other things, of the company’s amazing growth in the last three years — ever since Suri, with some help from her four young children, began running the chain after her husband Lalit Suri’s untimely death. What used to be known either as ‘Lalit’s hotels’, or more nebulously as ‘The Grand’ (or the ‘InterContinental’ or so forth, depending on the company’s tie-up at any given point in time with foreign chains, a practice it has now abandoned for a determinedly Indian identity) has now consolidated under a more assured ‘The Lalit’, bringing with it an instant recognition. But Jyostna Suri’s success with her hotels is not just about branding. It is about exceptional expansion in a short period of time, particularly when the industry is facing a crunch.
It’s a special day for the Suris, as I make my way up to the CMD’s office at The Lalit, New Delhi. The youngest of the Suri kids, 22-year-old Keshav, has just been appointed executive director, a position he will share with his sisters, all of whom are actively involved in the business. He’s been working his way up for the last one-and-half years, since he majored in law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (after having graduated first from the University of Warwick in business studies) — writing, amongst other things, dissertations on family-owned businesses (what else?) and the Gujarat riots and their impact on women! One of his first projects that will be visible to curious, outside eyes, is going to be a new nightclub this year-end, but, for now he’s just hoping that he’s gained enough ‘acceptance’ from the employees, some of whom have seen him virtually grow up.
Like all the Suri kids, he has had to start from the ranks — his surname, often a stumbling block, he says. And that’s exactly what he discusses with his mother and two of his sisters, Divya and Diksha, in the boardroom; the siblings come across as down-to-earth and somewhat fragile as they hesitantly refer to the ‘incident’ of their father’s death. One thing emerges quite clearly: “Mom (“Mrs Suri” to all of them, in office) is more democratic in her functioning than dad, who was tougher on deliverables. She likes to take everyone on board. Either you convince her or she convinces you… you don’t leave without reaching a decision.”
This is not going to be a family lunch—despite the presence of Jyotsna Suri’s five-year-old granddaughter. The little girl, after all, is merely spending quality time with dadi, as she is wont to once a week, accompanying Suri senior to office and even to meetings… The Suri siblings have said their goodbyes, and I sit down with grandmother and granddaughter, wondering what to order at the refurbished coffee shop, 24x7, known both for its pizzas and its pastry counter which is actually open 24x7. Diet Coke is eschewed because of the impressionable kid, ginger ale ordered and then Suri senior makes matters simpler by asking for a selection of sushi.
As a hotelier, Suri is known to frequently check on her hotel’s public areas. The restaurant, she agrees, has been chosen as our venue to allow her to do just that: “The first thing that I look at is how the staff is greeting the guests. It has to be with a ‘namaskar’, I am very strict.” And, indeed, earlier in the morning she greeted me with folded hands. The buffet and service, not to mention possible spots and stains, are subject to sharp scrutiny. “If something is wrong, it goes into my list. I discreetly tell whoever is in charge only later,” she says. On the other hand, she clearly knows her mind. “Till date”, she informs me, “there has never been an F&B manager who has been able to give me a perfect menu for my parties. I still make my own menus for every party that I host.”
I ask her what the entire industry has been abuzz with: Her ‘shopping’ spree. In the middle of a slowdown, how has she managed to acquire and open new hotels with a haste never seen before in the group? “Oh, but in any industry there are good times and bad times. You can’t be swayed by them,” she points out, and explains that the crunch hasn’t affected her budget because running costs are separate from development funds and “only after we complete one project do we take up another … and we own all our hotels and don’t borrow from the market.” It is only those, she pauses, “who had spread themselves too thin or were working on speculation, who have had to stop their projects.”
The room capacity of the chain is being doubled and at least five new hotels are set to come up by the end of next year, she says. And, in total, 10 new projects are planned at an investment of Rs 1,200-1,400 crore. The properties will not just be in India (where her focus is on tier-II cities) but also abroad (Koh Samui and Dubai), where the group is making its first foray. “Actually most of the land had already been bought by Lalit,” she corrects the impression about her ‘shopping’. “But yes, I was like a spark, taking in so much, absorbing everything, that I was able to work on all these, do in two years what we hadn’t in 20,” she acknowledges, “I am gradually settling now,” she adds.
For the main course, Suri settles for grilled fish, I for pasta but we make slow progress because of our conversation. “The first thing I did after her husband’s death was to learn finance,” she mentions — having been involved in all other aspects of the hotel business in his lifetime too, including in the initial years when, with small children “whose homework I would personally supervise”, and without any formal training (“but with common sense which is not so common”) she would still manage to put in 10-12 hours of work every day. When she eventually took over, she says she questioned ‘every single thing’ that the hotel chain had been doing as part of standard operating procedure. Facing a global recession, she told her employees ‘quite candidly’ that there was a choice to either retrench staff and ‘let families suffer’ or for them to come up with ways — and implement those — to cut operating costs. Things like ‘putting fruits and savouries in a car going to pick someone up’ were cut down. “As a group, we managed to save Rs 9 crore”, after the Mumbai attacks, she says.
Keshav, earlier, had talked about accompanying his parents on location-scouting trips. (“In Goa, we drove non-stop for 10 hours in a non-AC ambassador. As a kid, I was really tired and I told my parents, ‘either buy or not, but let’s go’.”) Now, it is time for other reminiscences: “The property in Kashmir,” says Suri, referring to her fabulous hotel, “did not shut for a single year all through militancy. When Lalit bought it, people said he was making a mistake,” she says, telling me also of the matter-of-fact way in which he would take his insulin shots through his shirt while talking to people and sleep in office in the afternoons, or eat on time to manage his diabetes even with ‘big’ people around. “You have to say he had guts,” she says. She has them too.
