So we can all discuss what's happening in the business. We can all discuss what we can do. But before that I just want to bring some attention to the doyen on the stage which is Mr. K.B. Kachru. So Mr. Hindustan hospitality. Are you all agreeable? So some of us, you know, going back in the days when Kapil Dev was about 30, 32, you know, he participated in an advertisement which was for Boost and the words he used was 'Boost is the secret of my energy.' Sachin also said the same thing. So then somebody in the audience in another session said Mr. Kachru must be asked saying, 'What is the secret of your energy? You're everywhere. You travel so much. You have a great network. Bureaucrats quake when you walk their corridors. You've set up this entire piece which is this golden portion cream that you've been able to get and you must tell us where to get it from because we are not able to match it, sir.' So, which is that dash that is the secret of Mr. Kachru's energy that India wants to know. Rather, I'm already in the dock so I don't know, is it time for me to call it a day?
No, no, to be honest, I think it's my passion, my love for what I'm doing, doing some right things, doing some wrong things, and succeeding with what is the ultimate goal I think which is can we try...
This is a, this is gali, this is all we are also trying to do the same thing sir. Golden portion powder which you must tell us about. We should call your wife. Okay, let's move on. So let me address the first question to Rajesh. And this is a two-prong question. Wonderful listing in the NASDAQ, right? Surprised the whole world over the years, barring I think a couple of years where things were not so great. You've come up with segments, processes, technology, applications in just about every distribution point or direction that anybody could think of. I mean, to my opinion, Booking.com is following through on what you guys are doing and so the others. I don't think they started it before. So how does your structure work? Who puts it all together also? Now you're doing some exceptional work with machine learning, your wonderful young lady who's the representation of your AI, you know, Myra, your bot that we were the first ones to come up with. How do these things come together? I mean, there is that much of intelligence and that much of experience and that much of broad breadth that a bit of a corporate XCOM can put together. How does this come together? Who searches it? Who comes with? Because a lot of I think people here are starting to say so what's next for me but you guys keep nimbly moving with the present for the future.
Well, three of them are sitting right there. They are the ones, they are the ones who do it all the time and make us look good. But firstly, thank you, thank you for all these kind words. And those, you know, one statement probably would have made my day although I don't think it's true that Booking is following us. No, Booking has been actually a massive global behemoth that we've learned a lot from them. But we've been trying to do our bit over the years. So, I'll tell you how I think it stems from the fact that at the very core of it, your vision, your thought was to build a long-term sustainable business. And the way the execution takes place is it's always brick by brick, right? So if you are looking at building a particular segment, you know, when you spoke about IPO, I'll tell you in 2010 we were overwhelmingly air booking business, like 95% of the business used to come from air. But that was just the beginning, right? Because that was a segment that moved online. And our vision from the word go has always been that we wanted to be the service provider for travelers in India for traveling and whatever the needs of the travelers would be, traveling within India, traveling outside of India and so on. So if you religiously and strategically carry on with that vision and with consistency in execution then things start falling in place, you know, sort of like I said, brick by brick. But I have to give credit to the team, right? Because you know, if you don't, it is not one person's job at all, right? I mean, you can think about it that you want to sort of, you had the idea and the vision and you know, Deep is the one who sort of came up with the idea and the founding team including me, a couple of others, we got together. But over the years we built scalable, you know, sort of structure with very able people as we were sort of scaling up the business, keep bringing them in and then segment by segment just keep addressing, keep solving the problem that was out there and then that gives you the business outcome automatically, right? And you know, the key is to do it at scale. And if you're not able to do it at scale, then the long-term sustainable business vision does not really fall in place. I think one of the key elements worth highlighting is, and maybe a couple of them. One is of course that you have to, and maybe they are connected with each other, is that you have to have larger group of people who would, and you know, bring in more and more people, bring in more and more able leadership at the top and keep bringing in talent and infusing new talent in the company. And for you to be able to do that when you run your business, you start your business as founders, you have to let go a lot, right? So I think and that has sort of over the years if I look back maybe has worked out quite well and it has helped us to be able to sort of scale. So I guess that's what I would say that has played out well.
So in your key maverick team and some of them are sitting here or key leadership team, who would you consider to be your creative mavericks? Or all of them are?
Actually each one of them, you know, in their own capacities. And it is not necessarily, I must say that it's not only the top leadership team. It is actually the next. So I'll tell you one very interesting thing that we do, and we've been sort of following it over the years, is to always look at the top 150 people who are the ones who are actually behind driving every quarter's goal, every year's goal, long-term vision and so on. And make sure that you do whatever it takes in terms of just providing them the resources, in terms of giving them the guidance, in terms of motivating them, in terms of solving for what's in it for them. And make sure that you end up retaining that talent and keep nurturing them and you know, of course, infuse the new one as you need. And for that what has also worked out, and when I said let go, it's not necessarily that you know, at one point in time you're doing pretty much everything and then you have to just keep letting go in terms of roles and responsibilities. But it's also about making sure that that very important element of what's in it for them that gets resolved. And that for us has been stock, has been equity, has been options, has been stock units, whatever name that you want to call it. And it's about giving them or sharing the success together, not necessarily only in talk or giving them role and learning opportunities, but also making sure that they sort of also participate in the gains, right? Because if that happens, I think it works out very, very well.
I'll come back to you. I have a follow-up question to this and I'll just go around. Yeah, congratulations, great IPO. People were waiting for this I think in the industry and outside the industry for very long. There were many remarks that was saying whatever. And then a quick, if I may call it loosely, shift in direction where you also went aggressively into management contracts, soft branding, and exceptionally the mobility and I think the pace has been quite exceptional. So what's the direction change and why was that necessary? And if so, what is the learning or why it was not done before?
So I think it's the phase that I came in. You know, I think the phase of first of all making sure we entered the hospitality industry pretty late. Oberoi and Taj came in 1905 and 1906, our first hotel came in 1976. If Memoria had been left alone with Oberoi, it would have never happened. So 1976, I think the first 20 to 30 years we built some fabulous assets and that's quite a tremendous job as the company did to build their own, you know, own brand and ITC Hotels came about. I think there was a need when we felt that when you consolidated yourself, you got your own call centers, you got your own distribution, you got your own loyalty, you got your own people, now was the time to step out and do what the others were doing. And that's when we started the path called the asset light. We said it's not that we will stop constructing, we'll continue to do that, but we now have the ability to go out and manage others' assets which tremendously helps you scale up the business. And that's how the brand called Storii came about. That's how the Mementos came about. We are entering into the branded residences space. We got into food takeaway services, though I think is the need of the hour which got us going. And there's definitely a lot of market to cover. Well, you say the pace is good but I still feel that we can run much faster. We've...
You know, we've signed like 60 hotels in the last 2 years. We've opened 29 across all brands. So it's a very interesting phase actually what India is going through right now. There are plenty of opportunities for all the brands.
And sorry, with your permission can I add one more thing? When you become public then there's also growth pressure.
So I remember at one session which was I think last year maybe and when you were on stage and I was in the audience and you said, 'We are learning how to manage owners, a skill that we didn't have.'
So say more about it because it's a, you know, group of people who also have asset light models. What was the learning and why was it necessary to run?
So I think when the brand we actually ran was Fortune, Mr. Kumar sitting here. He was the one in our company was actually technically managing a brand which managed the assets for other owners. But there was no formal education. There was no formal setup. We ran our own trails. We dealt with our own people. We dealt with our challenges. We had to report to our CMCs or our management committees. When you start dealing with owners, somebody mentioned it earlier also. I think he's trusting you with his property. You know, he's giving you the asset in your hands. You got to guard it. You got to, you know, you promise him certain amount of GOPs and EBITDA, you need to make sure that that happens. So it's not just management of an owner. Owners can be, I've always told them, I always still believe that any hotel that you run, we are two sides of the same coin. You know, if the operator and the owners do not get along well, it's not going to happen. We opened, I must say this because when we opened this new brand called the Mementos, our first hotel was in Udaipur and this owner trusted me when we didn't even have the brand announced. You know, after several meetings, you know, he agreed that okay, we'll sign with you. And he said I'll leave no stone unturned on the property. And I think he's done a remarkable job, a property which is 20 km away from where people want to get married and commanding similar kind of price what anybody around the lake would. So it's a matter of trust and you need to make sure that you live up, you know, live up to that trust. That's most important.
Sir, it's all your fault. That's the problem.
No, no, no, but at the same time today it's not just these large owners, you know, I can see today the small owners. It is no longer the game with, you know, large business houses who will spend crores. Today there are three friends getting together opening a Storii which cost them 50 crores for example and when they come and sit with you over five to six meetings they want to understand what are the returns going to be, you know, so those opportunities are tremendous. And it's not management, I think it's the way you, you know, maybe I didn't interpret it well last time but...
No, because that question didn't go through after that so that's why I remember it.
Enjoying the journey to, you know, win the love interest is fantastic. When I was doing that I used to always say the complication of a 20-key hotel in how much cerebral time it takes from you is the same as if you were running a 200 luxury. There's no difference in what effort and time and thinking process and motivation that you need to put into it.
I'll come back with a second. Mr. Kachru, you're the one who started all this, right? Tier 2, tier 3 cities, all owners love you. I mean, I have never heard anything different. What was that skill in you barring the portion that we will talk about over a drink that makes you better than anybody else at making this huge family of owners which has benefited Radisson but I think most of the credit to whatever I've heard and I've learned over 40 years is truly something in the skill that you have and if you could tell people simple parts of that skill that made you successful.
You know, when I, I'm sure a lot of you know that I was working for the government earlier. And when I moved to private sector I had never done development in my life. I was just hardcore operations and I was looking after tourism development. But no development of hotels and I got an opportunity. So I moved along and I was based in Singapore. I'm giving you the background how one gains confidence and learns and how you make mistakes. So the precondition for my new job was that I should be based in either in Hong Kong or Singapore not anywhere else because they felt an international brand at that time can't be based for South Asia in Delhi or Mumbai. I had no choice. I actually didn't have a job. So I agreed to move and I was given the entire territory. We set up hotels in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and even Mauritius at that time. What I learned was there are two sets of ownerships. I'm talking about 30 years back, little over that. One which was making hotels for ROI, rightly, that's the right way to go. And there was a set of owners which were building hotels for ROE, they wanted return on ego as some of the speakers earlier, you know, narrated a few stories about it and they wanted to position themselves right. I know somebody said hotel, you know, that kind of situation was there. So we learned along the way that we have to find a mix. But what was the most important thing which really helped me was gaining the trust of the ownership. Unless you can feel the pain of the person who is writing the check, you can never make it. You can never gain the trust. We may give all kinds of narrations and, you know, say we are doing an excellent job and we'll give you this and we'll give you this. I think you have to learn to hold hands in difficult conditions even if it's against your own company. You have to exhibit and you have to actually prove that your judgment or your recommendation is correct. That was one step which I feel because I had worked in the industry for a long time and fortunately had good networking even at that time. So we selected some right partners to start with who trusted in us. Particularly for the first hotel we built. It was a good-sized hotel, 250-room hotel and there was no hotel in South Asia at that point of time. And when I gave him the first presentation, he had seen some hotels in US at that time under this brand. So he told me, can you meet some of my other investors? So I went to meet one particular gentleman and I gave him a presentation. I said Radisson, his answer was... So that's how we started. And we built, I think what gave Radisson an advantage over others was we, I would call it, we bet on India. We saw India as a huge opportunity. There was nothing happening in state capitals, nothing happening in tier 2 and tier 3 towns. No international company was ready to go to these towns at that time. So we selected a place which didn't open. I wish it was our first hotel from personal point of view but it opened. Second was a hotel in Katra in Jammu and Kashmir. That was our first hotel we opened. And a partner in London who has 10 hotels in London. He told me... So I said, he said... So I mean I couldn't imagine that something can actually be done there. So I said why are you pushing and he had 10 very successful hotels with us in London. He said, you know, there's lot of clientele coming out of India and they're not staying in our hotels. I want brand visibility. I learned this from them that brand visibility is as important as the capital. Today we are 14 operating hotels just in Punjab.
And I give the entire credit to people who actually advised us the right things at the right time. And the initial team, as Rajesh said, you know, it's people's business, it's people who make it. They're the people who believed in themselves and believed what can be done with India's tier 2, tier 3 cities. 50% of our hotels, we have 245 hotels at the moment in India. 50% are in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Great. Um, we go a little differently. Anil, ITC Hotels, one major stance or the major focus area has been sustainability, environment, as also a brand promise of ownership. As you look around you, other brands, other hoteliers, quick ones so that we can keep the time, what are the two things that ITC Hotels is doing and you're disappointed because it's something that everybody should be doing that you would advise other hoteliers to do which has succeeded for you but you're surprised that they don't do it?
