Rakshay Dhariwal of Passcode Hospitality: The party starter

F&B is a difficult space to crack in India, but the post-pandemic boom in eating and drinking out among consumers has been an encouraging time for entrepreneurs. In April, United Spirits, the Indian arm of multinational beverage company Diageo, acquired a 15% stake in Maya Pistola Agavepura, whose post-money valuation stands at ₹38 crore. Pass Code Hospitality is valued at ₹345 crore, and ICW at ₹25 crore.

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Dhariwal always wanted to run a business. “Children want to be race car drivers or astronauts, but I was pretty certain I wanted to be a businessman," he says. In fact, he had narrowed down his area of expertise too. “When I was in the boarding school United World College of South East Asia in Singapore, my friends and I were chatting about our ambitions. I said I wanted to open clubs all over South Asia," he recalls. While that may not have come to pass yet, he does own multiple bars and restaurants in India, and sells Pistola in Thailand and Singapore.

He did his schooling around the world. His father’s job as an executive with companies like Unilever, Pepsi Co. and Bennett, Coleman & Co. meant that the family constantly moved cities, and he ended up studying in different places: Mumbai, Sydney, Delhi, Johannesburg, Budapest, the Philippines and Singapore. Wherever the family moved, they stayed in hotels for a few weeks before shifting to rented accommodation. They would eat at the hotel’s restaurants, and the extroverted and impressionable Dhariwal would befriend the staff. In a way, he imbibed the nuances of hospitality from a young age.

In 2002, he went to Indiana University Bloomington in the US for his undergraduate degree. His choice of college was based on two factors—pursuing telecommunications and being at a party hot spot. When he enrolled at Indiana Bloomington, the college had qualified for the finals of the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Championship, gripping the students in celebratory fervour. “I wasn’t really a good student. I went to college with the hopes of securing a degree in marketing and telecommunications (and I got that), but I left with a PhD in partying," says Dhariwal.

He began applying for jobs in the US, but wasn’t happy with the salary. This made him turn to his other abiding ambition—running a party business. He focused on starting a party cruise liner in India, because the economy was “on fire" with the GDP crossing 10% in 2006-07. The project was in the last stages of execution when the 2007-09’s global economic slowdown ended it.

He then went the opposite way—into boutique wellness. He returned to India and becoming a franchisee of the brand Kerala Ayurveda, and by the end of 2007, had opened three outlets of the wellness company, offering spa treatments and Ayurvedic medicines, across Delhi. But the party bug hadn’t left Dhariwal.

A few years later, he considered bringing one of London’s hottest nightclubs, Whisky Mist, to Delhi. The challenge was finding well-priced real estate for it. Around that time, he discovered a good but small potential location for a bar in Vasant Vihar that lent itself perfectly to a speakeasy. “In fact, the speakeasy was my sister Radhika’s idea. She was in the US then where speakeasies were all the rage. And here, I couldn’t find a good cocktail," Dhariwal recalls.

The siblings drew up a business plan and shared it with their father, who agreed to give them an initial capital of ₹2 crore, with which they opened PCO in 2012. “I don’t think my father took us seriously. He thought we would learn a few tough life lessons. Much to his dismay, we succeeded and how!" says the entrepreneur. The siblings aimed to break even in 18 months, but they managed to do it in six months and averaged profits of about 60%. His sister continues to be a partner at Passcode Hospitality.

Their secret sauce was putting together a great team. They had two exceptional bartenders—Vaibhav Singh, who went on to be the co-founder of Nao Spirits (parent company of Greater Than and Hapusa gins), and Arijit Bose, who has become a prolific bar entrepreneur. “We were perhaps the first place in the country to start doing bar takeovers," shares Dhariwal.

Twelve years ago, Delhi was awash in simple, sweetish drinks like Mojito and Cosmopolitan, whereas PCO was stirring up complex libations such as martinis and negronis. The trio of Dhariwal-Bose-Singh pulled in alcohol enthusiasts in the city as guests, from bartenders to well-heeled expats, making it one of the buzziest places in town and organically building a cocktail community. It set the tone for Dhariwal’s next ventures.

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He started reinvesting the profits from PCO to expand his portfolio. In 2014, he founded a boutique private members club called À Ta Maison (ATM) with supper clubs that were lauded as the next big thing then; in 2016, he opened the South-East Asian restaurant Ping’s Cafe Orient; in 2017, he launched the modern Indian restaurant Jamun spotlighting regional dishes; in 2018, he introduced Saz American Brasserie with casual American and European dishes; in 2022, he unveiled the rooftop restobar Raki in Goa; and in 2023, he started Mister Merchant’s in Pune, serving Mediterranean cuisine.

Apart from Raki and Mister Merchant’s, all the other restaurants, bars and the private club started in Delhi. Now, Passcode Hospitality runs F&B establishments across Delhi, Mumbai, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune and Goa.

A year before the pandemic, in 2019, he partnered with the homegrown marketing and events firm World Music Stage (WMS) to launch the festival India Cocktail Week (ICW), and in 2022, he introduced the agave spirit brand Maya Pistola Agavepura.

Dhariwal began discussing the idea of launching a spirits brand with his sister five days into the lockdown. He wanted a product that people could consume at home at a time when restaurants and bars were taking a severe beating.

“I needed some money coming in through the door," he says, and branching into a different category seemed like a good idea. At that point, homegrown gin brands were doing well in India and had created a subsidiary market for mixers and tonics. The liquor space was crowded with new gins and whiskies, whereas abroad, tequila was on the rise. The Dhariwal siblings decided to disrupt the Indian liquor market with a premium agave product.

“We are adept at spotting the next big thing, and good at executing it," says Dhariwal. Diageo India’s acquisition is testament to the latter. Dhariwal says, “With them coming in, the vision is to build it to be a household name across the world."

It is an ambitious plan, and a challenge to create awareness for niche alcohol brands in India with government restrictions on above-the-line marketing. “My approach is simple—liquid on the lips," he says. The phrase refers to the many ways a brand can get consumers to try the spirit. Being the owner of multiple bars and a large-scale cocktail event like ICW has worked in Dhariwal’s favour because he can get people to try Pistola at these locations. He has a similar catchy marketing phrase for restaurants, “bums on the seat", which refers to more seats being occupied. In the dining space, this can be achieved through seasonal events and special dishes, such as Christmas menus.

Expansion is on the cards for 2025. With Pistola, the goal is to double sales next year by entering new geographies, and going deeper in the existing geographies where the brand is currently present, including Delhi, Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, West Bengal and Assam, and three international markets, US, Singapore and Thailand. With Pass Code Hospitality, the company is looking at launching six new restaurants and bars in the coming year. While ICW hosts drinks festivals in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Goa currently, he aims to expand to Kolkata and Hyderabad in 2025.

Dhariwal maintains his signature high energy throughout the interview, with his eyes reflecting myriad emotions. They well up when he speaks of his two sons, three and five years old, and they light up at the mention of partying.

So, what is a good party according to him? “When the guests are not looking at their watch or checking their phone," he says.

Have you been to such parties? “I throw them all the time," he says with a grin.

Quick three

Are you a beach or a mountain person?
For now, a mountain person.

You will raise a toast to?
Ratan Tata.

What are you reading to your children?
Lord of the Rings and The Rings of Power.

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