Mumbai: It couldn’t have been easy to up the ante of his legendary father, who had risen from hotel coal clerk to forge the finest—and many firsts—of Indian hospitality. Yet, by the time of his passing on 14 November, at 94, the son had stamped his own imprimatur on the global industry. Prithvi Raj Singh lived up to his given name to become a master of the universe. He owned perfection, making the tiniest flaw come crawling for mercy. The credo of the god of big things was “the devil is in the details”.
PRS ‘Biki’ may have been to the manner born—growing up in Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh’s posh Grand Hotel—but he wasn’t the ordained successor. That birth right was his older brother’s, who, too, carried the anointing in his name: Tilak Raj Singh. But the ever-practical father had put sentiment aside and chosen solidity over flamboyance. Each son had displayed early enough what he was capable of, or wasn’t. Tiki loved the good life too much to buckle down to creating it for hotel guests. Biki had used his eye for the best to professional gain. Barely into his 20s, he’d managed to add the toast of Paris, the Bluebell Girls, to the roster of cabarets at Prince’s, the star of Raj Calcutta’s fabled night-life. He had continued to help his father pick out winning properties, including Egypt’s historic Mena House. But he really signed his own name on the industry in 1986.
In the late 1960s, when Rai Bahadur had showed him his bid for the land yet to be reclaimed at Bombay’s Nariman Point, Biki had exclaimed, “Aren’t you overdoing things?” The father’s reply encapsulated what became the son’s own rubric: “When you’ve set your heart on the best, you should never let money come in the way.” When the Oberoi Sheraton finally opened in 1973, after eight traumatic and financially lethal years, Rai Bahadur had turned to the vacant plot on its left, and said, “Biki, do you think you can build another hotel here? Not as large but really classy?”
The stunned son had not replied straight away, but after its completion at a cost of ₹600 million, thrice that of its neighbour, it was the father’s turn to stagger. And the industry’s. ‘Five-star’ no longer sufficed. A new classification had to be created, ‘super deluxe’. Biki insisted on it, also creating a new brand, ‘The Oberoi’—distinguished by hushed luxury, uncompromisingly top-end but decidedly not over-the-top.
Biki’s equally distinctive contribution was the later Vilas brand. The luxury tents of Rajvilas in heraldic Jaipur and its individualistic successors in Ranthambore; Agra, Udaipur and New Chandigarh. Here, Biki’s definition of luxury led to not just fantasy bathrooms, often with their own walled gardens, but also a year’s efforts in developing the Kama brand of exotic toiletries. The continuously massaged ‘Wow’ factor included tracking down—and getting treated—the injured bull in the bazaar that had so aroused a guest’s concern; the staff at Ranthambore’s Vanyavilas had gone to these lengths after the lady had checked out, and sent her an ‘action-taken’ email. Customer delight is upped to customer orgasm.
In 2002, Biki asked me to revise my 1992 biography of his father, Dare to Dream, because he “had been ill then and couldn’t give you my full attention”. So, at the construction of Amarvilas—within sighing distance of the Taj Mahal—I saw firsthand the legendary vision and energy he put into every project. He ordered the demolition and replacement of fixtures along an entire corridor because the lamps were ‘not at the optimum level’. Arguably, Shah Jahan was less pernickety and nowhere near as hands-on in the creation of his own masterpiece.
Rattan Keswani, an Oberoi old hand, recalled the gargantuan restoration of The Cecil, Shimla. “Mr Oberoi personally took me through every blueprint, every debris-covered cranny. He explained his choice of every piece of furniture, where he wanted it positioned, and why. He puts his heart into every project, but here, where his father first worked, he seemed to be pouring his soul in too. The hotel is way above the level of the road, and vehicular traffic isn’t allowed. Everything had to be winched up. Once a fullfledged generator hung swaying in the air for a whole day, because the crane was stuck. When I summoned the courage to ask him what the budget was, Mr Oberoi retorted, ‘A budget is not for you to do. Your job is to create a guest experience beyond compare.’”
His obsession with perfection plays havoc with bottomlines and timelines, Biki considers it not waste but necessity. As David Longworth, then head of the Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development, said, “He does this because he believes that his guests-to-be deserve the best—his exacting idea of the best.” Biki was not wrong when he boasted that “future generations will not believe that Udaivilas wasn’t originally a Rajput palace.”
To adapt Churchill’s dismissal of the ‘modest’ Attlee, Biki was an arrogant man with much to be arrogant about. He had zero tolerance for the slightest lapse, but if Biki the tyrant was brutal in his dressing down it was not because he was Biki the boss but Biki the aesthete, who knew what he was talking about. He’d unceremoniously berate the hapless general manager (GM) for a discoloured patch on the hand-knotted carpet: “It has been vigorously shampooed instead of being lightly washed with a mild detergent.” He’d denounce a flower arrangement as ‘atrocious’ and pinpoint why: the anthuriums were a centimetre too wide, or the oriental lilies not perfectly colour-coordinated. His rationale was: “Millions of rupees have gone into creating the brand, the restaurants, the clothes of the GM, the choice of silver. A sloppily placed comma could undermine it all.” And yes, he did make staffers rewrite a letter over and over till it passed his test of correctness.
The ’Q’ quotient
If quality is imperative in any hotel that claims the same adjective, in the Oberois it is non-negotiable. Corporate consultant Dilip Cherian recounted how a hundred members of the global Young Presidents’ Organization visiting Jaipur were denied their wish to have lunch at Rajvilas. Dilip had even gone over the head of the GM, who’d said that the resort already had a full house, and they couldn’t take any outside booking, and tried his clout with Delhi HQ, as unsuccessfully. “It’s not often that a hotel will turn away from such custom, which has the potential to spread word internationally to the right kind of customer about its extraordinary facilities. But that’s the Oberoi; they won’t cut corners for extra custom. They are geared to provide their standard of service for x number of guests, and if x+y is going to dilute that standard, they won’t do it.”
Biki’s three-point quality star separated the Oberois from the boys.
Q1: Selection of the right people. Biki sat in on interviews. Critical attributes were communication, personality and attitude—to guests and colleagues. Plus, composure, poise and presentation. By the time the candidate had done ‘the long walk’ from the room’s door to the chair facing the panel, the chairman had made 80% of his decision. The rest of the panel could conceivably make him change his ‘yes’ into a ‘no’, but never the reverse. Once, a candidate’s stiletto heel caught in her sari while she was doing the walk, and she was left standing inelegantly in a pool of silk. She gathered it up, and proceeded anyway. Biki looked over his glasses, and said “Clumsy, wasn’t it?” She replied without missing a beat, “But sexy, wasn’t it?” The spunky lass got in.
Q2: The premium placed on training. Every hotel has a training cell. Plus large sums are invested in the Oberoi Centre for Learning & Development, upgraded by Biki from the Oberoi School of Management started by Rai Bahadur in the 1960s, when he realized that a new breed of managers would be needed for the smart new hotels he was building.
Q3: Guest feedback. The Guest Comment card is prominently displayed. It’s pivotal at annual budget reviews, where the senior corporate team assesses each property. Biki himself would read out all the negative comments, to see what was wanting and if corrective action was taken speedily enough. He said, “No other marker is as effective in showing if the processes are working for the guest or whether we are making the guest bend to our systems.”
The industry hat
Biki Oberoi’s industry hat was distinguished as the one he sported at the races. Few will cavil or demur with his claim that “A lot of Indian hotels have improved because of us.” Priya Paul, president of The Park Hotels group, spoke for the new breed of hoteliers in anointing The Oberoi as the brand leader. “Biki raised the bar for the whole industry. The Vilases took it to another level. Even his restaurants have the same elan. They are contemporary in concept and styling. If you want to be international and attract a global customer, you have to keep up.” Biki’s own aphorism was: “The hotel industry is like showbiz. You have to come up with a new act every time.”
Priya had added a less-recognized distinction. “Creme caramel tastes exactly the same each time and in each of their hotels. This level of consistency can only come about with constant training, constant evaluation, constant retraining.” Indeed, by investing so much in education and training, the Oberois have created a pool of high talent, which the rest of the industry happily dips into.
Biki Oberoi persuaded the global committee of the World Travel & Tourism Council to establish an India chapter, which he then led from the front. He brought together all the stakeholders as well as the involved ministries, civil aviation, finance, external affairs and, of course, tourism, to address industry issues such as more equitable airline-seat quotas, upgraded airports, rationalization of taxes, reduction of import duties on luxury foods and wine, and visas on demand. He had long pushed for a single private-public body such as the British Tourist Authority.
Also a force in the Hotel Association of India, he initiated the dual tariff system (a higher rate for foreigners).
For his stellar contribution to India’s tourist industry, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2008. That he has provided a global benchmark is acknowledged in the international awards his hotels garner with almost obscene regularity. In 2022, he was listed among the 100 most powerful in global hospitality.
Air on the ‘G’ string
They made an odd couple, the reclusive Biki Oberoi and the hi-vis corporate consultant Suhel Seth, 35 years his junior. They’d spend hours discussing their shared interest in fine cigars and shirts hand-stitched by tailors of hoary repute. In the assessment of his friend, “There wasn’t another gentleman hotelier left, apart from Isadore Sharp (of the Four Seasons).” Biki believed in correct English, indeed in correctness all round. He wrote letters or picked up the telephone; he certainly never communicated via SMS. He always wore a kerchief in the front pocket of his jacket; and never non-laced shoes with a suit.
Industry veteran Rajiv Kaul remembered that when he was just a GM, Mr Oberoi’s only instruction was, “Create the life of a gentleman.”
Vikram Oberoi, now elevated to MD & CEO of the group, again used the ‘g’ word in recalling what “Dad taught us most. That attitude and manners are very important. He dinned into us that, whether in business or personal life. your word should be good enough, It doesn’t need a piece of paper.” Apart from Vikram’s sister Natasha, who has long been an entrepreneur in Australia, the plural refers to his cousin, Arjun, now chairman. There was correctness in this succession plan too. Arjun was the son of Biki’s older brother, Tiki, who had been found dead in his marble bathtub on 13 January 1984.
Suhel had unabashedly averred, “Biki is what makes his hotels so stylish. While others are killing each other over ever-larger suites and overwhelming attention, he knows that his guests want something more subtle, more privacy. This detachment, too, reflects the personal style of the chairman. He doesn’t work the rope-line, pumping flesh. He is personally as much of a quiet oasis as his hotels.”
Following alphabetical orderliness, PRS’s unflinching pursuit of perfection ranked above his rectitude. Sound-bite Suhel said, “Biki suffers from divine discontent, but only because he knows that everything can be improved upon. His epitaph should read: Here lies a man who lived and died for the passion of perfection.”
If an Englishman’s home is his castle, this Anglophile’s came complete with an actual moat. The rose petals strewn on it were the only indulgence in Biki’s farmhouse-cum-office on the outskirts of Delhi. In this epitome of understated elegance the hush was broken only by the mewl of wild peacocks sweeping the impeccable lawns with their tails. Closer to a real castle was Fort Prithviraj, perched high above the nondescript hamlet of Naila near what he always pronounced ‘Jai-pore’. Biki had transformed a decrepit pile of stone into a surreal retreat, with his signature water bodies glistening in the parched landscape, cascades of flamboyant bougainvillaea, larders fully stocked to serve any fanciful whim, a very English drawing room with a piano, fireplace and silver-framed photographs of family, dogs and his own trophy-laden polo team. The bathrooms featured his boast of rosewood toilet seats. The postal zone was reflected only in the Rajasthani mirrored walls of the dining room. Like an angrez Chhatrapati, Prithviraj Singh would walk slowly up the garden path shaded by an umbrella held up by his faithful Nepali valet.
Was there ever a chink in the hauteur? The Oberoi lobbies come armour-plated against boisterous kids, but the impregnable Fortress Biki was totally breached by his grandchildren. Only his closest friends knew that when Vikram’s Armand, Isabella and ‘Mimi’ (Amelia) and Arjun’s Olive, Lucas and Ines were much smaller, his Delhi desk drawer always had a trove of toffees. The kids lived on the same family estate, and would clamber onto Grampa for hugs; the otherwise unbending Biki was even known to go down on all fours for them.
But, at the end of the day, his larger family was his hotels. In Biki’s own words to me, “I’m a poor little innkeeper.” Modifying that uncharacteristic modesty with “A keeper of the Oberoi inner conscience.”
Who knows if history will dismiss PRS Oberoi as an arrogant anachronism or iconize him even more than his father. What’s indisputable now is that the son did not merely burnish the Rai Bahadur’s legacy. He reinvented it. And in the process became the unchallenged Lord of Luxe. It would take a brave person to try to throw down a velvet gauntlet.
Bachi Karkaria is the author of Dare To Dream, the Life of M.S.Oberoi (Viking-Penguin, 1992).