Epitaph of a school of entrepreneurship

Four businessmen who died this year might have done things differently from today's founders

Two days after the death of P R S Oberoi in November, Scene Unseen, brood in tow, found themselves at the Clarkes Hotel in Shimla. The hotel does not bear the Oberoi name, but this is where the Oberoi story began.

In the 1920s, when it was called the Cecil (now there is another hotel by this name in Shimla), the manager, Ernest Clarke, took a liking to a front desk clerk called Mohan Singh Oberoi, so much so that he handed over the management to the young man. The young Oberoi later became the hotel’s owner, changed its name as