Vishal Kamat of Kamat Hotels on why consistency is king
The executive director of Kamat Hotels on the journey from his grandfather’s dishwashing roots to a ₹700-crore empire, and why he does not believe in growth for growth’s sake
When Vishal Kamat, the executive director of Kamat Hotels (India) Ltd (KHIL), was growing up, he didn’t really consider any vocation or business. He was always clear that he would join the family’s storied hospitality enterprise—one that traces its history in some form or the other to over a century, is synonymous with highway road journeys, reliability and consistency, idlis and filter coffee. The recognisability of the restaurant brand across western and southern India is such that “Kamat" is ubiquitous with south Indian fast food and a certain standard of hygiene and affordability.
Kamat Hotels (India) Ltd also operates 22 hotels in the four- and five-star categories, owning two of the properties and leasing 11 others, with a total inventory of about 2,500 rooms. The Orchid Hotels, their flagship brand, is present in 19 cities, with the highest number of properties in Mumbai and Pune, including IRA by Orchid, Toyam by Orchid and Fort JadhavGadh (near Pune).
The company has a layered history connected to the family, going back a few generations but significantly from the time of Vishal’s grandfather Venkatesh. He was prolific in the restaurant business, with Satkar, the vegetarian restaurant opposite Mumbai’s Churchgate station started in 1957-58, followed by Samrat, Status in Nariman Point, known for its Gujarati thalis, Santoor and many other “S" brands.
Venkatesh’s son and Vishal’s father, Vithal, who pioneered the hotel business after taking over from his father in the early 1970s, wrote a book Idli, Orchid and Will Power (2018) about his journey from the concept of a single, family-style restaurant to a hotel chain. KHIL, incorporated in 1986, went public eight years later before Orchid started in 1997 at a location near the Mumbai domestic airport or Terminal One as it is referred to nowadays.
“I still do not have even one-tenth the experience of my father," says Vishal, referring often to the role played by Vithal in growing the business. “It’s my father who in the 1980s started branding Kamats, the way Kamats are stylised and recognised today." One of those additions was the discotheque Go Bananas in Mumbai, which was a rage at the time when discos as a concept were a rage.
On the administrative floor of a building right next to the Orchid in Santacruz, Vishal is seated in a small, windowless meeting room that feels soundproof, except for the rhythmic hum of the air-conditioner. The mug of green tea he walks in with remains untouched through the course of the chat because he is an enthusiastic storyteller.
Vishal may have narrated this many times before, but that does not dampen the 43-year-old’s enthusiasm when he recounts the tale of his grandfather, Venkatesh, who arrived in Mumbai from Bhatkal in Karnataka to wash dishes in a restaurant. The restaurant’s owner, impressed by the young man’s entrepreneurial spirit, offered him his daughter’s hand in marriage along with the opportunity to take over his business.
However, Vishal’s grandfather decided to open his own restaurant first, before accepting the marriage proposal, and set off a saga of growth and innovation that led roughly a century later to KHIL. Vishal says Venkatesh had an industrious drive. “That man worked till his last dying day," he says.
Venkatesh would wear a white shirt, dhoti and leave for work, arriving at the same time everyday, sitting at his table till the end of day and leaving precisely on time as well. He was a strict disciplinarian, Vishal remembers, particular about everything, which was the basis of their success. “That is, to take any process, dumb it down and make it hyper consistent. Ours may not have been the best idli in town, but it is the most consistent."
Vishal, who grew up in south Mumbai where most of their early businesses were, studied for a few years in Cathedral and John Connon, followed by HR College and then the Institute of Hotel Management in Dadar, simultaneously getting a science degree through distance learning.
“Hospitality is a science," he says, “and also an art because it’s not a process. You cannot process your hospitality. You have to have that element of reading people, your own employees, your customer and be able to tweak it. Based on that, they (customers) will say if it’s bad service (or good), the last time was better, etc. So it’s a lot of variables in that."
He started as a management trainee in 2003-04 in their own company, learning the ropes, under the watchful eyes of (one of the directors) Param Kannampilly, who went on to start The Fern brand of hotels. “One of the other challenges with family-owned businesses," says Vishal, “at least when I passed out (from catering college) in 2003, is that it would be difficult for me to get an opportunity in another place (due to familial connections/name)."
The experience as a trainee taught him, as the next generation owner of the establishment working his way up the ranks, when he needed to fit in and when he could not, inculcating in him the sensibility of how to win people over.
He dismisses the debate around nepotism—possibly more highlighted in the high-profile movie business than others—as baseless. “I think it is absolutely rubbish," he says.
“The reason being, and as a beneficiary I can say this, who else do you do it for? In life, you are earning for your family. Every parent does that. Every human being, man or woman, couple or single, is doing it for themselves and their family. You’re not going to do it for your neighbour, are you?"
But, he clarifies, taking the example of popular mythology, what is not right is that children take for granted what their parents do for them. “It should not be the blind Dhrithrashtra-style of nepotism but more the Bharat-style, which is based on ability also. You may have faith that this boy or girl will do something, but if that child doesn’t have the internal desire, then you should consider not pushing them."
By the time Vishal graduated from his role as a trainee, he was already entering a successful business. His father Vithal has since stepped back and as the executive chairman and managing director of KHIL, he is no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the empire. “That’s why we have professionals, who have already imbibed our ethos," says Vishal. “Many of them do a better job than me in that particular role."
Around the mid-1990s, the family business, which at one time may have had over 100 restaurants, got divided among various uncles and cousins. Vishal’s brother Vikram too has gone his separate way, founding Kamats India, which has the VITS brand of hotels, while Vishal and his sister Vidita stayed on with KHIL.
“I’d rather have fewer hotels," Vishal says, “but with each hotel performing at a certain top level in terms of guest satisfaction, in its output, rather than just open many (properties) and then struggle with it. Growth for sake of growth is not the idea."
He takes great pride in mentioning the importance of sustainability in his hotels’ ethos, talking about the several domestic and international awards they have won, including Green Globe Awards in 1998, 2000. He believes they were among the first to encourage guests to reuse towels, not change bedsheets daily, moderate the flow in taps before it became an industry practice to save water.
Having spent 20-odd years in the industry, Vishal has a bird’s-eye view of traveller trends, a phenomenon that’s evolved rapidly since the pandemic. Travel trends would change once every few years earlier, but now they transform within a year, he says.
He takes the example of senior citizens, who travel more now than they did before. People are more willing to seek and spend on premium products because of loftier aspirations, he adds. For a hotel business, that means greater expectations from guests.
With a current market cap of about ₹702 crore, KHIL’s year-on-year revenue growth went from negative figures in FY20 and 2021 to ₹10.2 crore and ₹10.8 crore in the subsequent post-lockdown years. Their profits went from approximately ₹25 crore in 2020 to ₹312 crore in 2023. “We had our value really down before covid," Vishal says, “now it’s come up. My focus is more on my business than on the top price per se. It goes up, it goes down, it does what it does."
KHIL has opened properties in Rishikesh and Dehradun in Uttarakhand and Bhavnagar in Gujarat in March. Their intention is to get to the figure of 30 hotels soon.
On days when he is not working, Vishal likes to laze but he is not lazy, he says, trying to explain the contradiction. His home in Mumbai throbs with three dogs and a parrot, besides wife Aditi, who has her own restaurant Home Chef (her father Rahul Limaye founded the Gypsy restaurant, a Mumbai landmark in Dadar). So even on the rare occasion when he is sitting idle, he wants to be occupied. This does not include cooking, clarifies the catering college graduate. He smiles when he says, “I avoid cooking. Yeah."
By his own admission, Vishal used to be a good cook while he was studying, replicating what he learnt in college at home. The demand for his cooking, naturally, rose from the extended family till he realised that he did not enjoy it anymore because he was having to do a lot of it. So he one day made batata bhaji, a potato dish, so badly that he was not asked to cook again. “From that time on, I did not cook, though I do enjoy cooking," he says, presenting another contradiction.
“Recently, in Lonavala, I grilled some deadly chicken, which everybody loved. But when you cook yourself, you don’t tend to eat," he says, grinning. “I felt full just looking at it."
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