In this series, Sramana Mitra shares chapters from her book Vision India 2020, that outlines 45 interesting ideas for start-up companies with the potential to become billion-dollar enterprises. These articles are written as business fiction, as if we’re in 2020, reflecting back on building these businesses over the previous decade. We hope to spark ideas for building successful start-ups of your own.
For years, I had been disturbed by the demolition of India’s architectural heritage. In the name of development, we have watched centuries-old homes leveled in a matter of hours, and in their stead multi-storied apartments climb oddly above the lilies of remaining rooftops. In Kolkata, I watched helplessly as British-era gems, old palaces, and homesteads disappeared one after another.
My family is old Kolkata. Our rice paddy fields greened as monsoons washed over them. Our heavy-limbed mango orchards bore the juiciest and most fragrant varietals. One of our vacation homes nestled in my grandfather’s legendary rose garden in the now traumatized Bengal-Bihar border. Our relatives’ houses dotted Kolkata. These old houses in the alleys of Pathuriaghata and Shyampukur were sprawling places, bearing the stories of Kolkata’s now receding past. In the halls of the Ghosh family of Pathuriaghata, the All-Bengal Music Conference was founded in 1937, and Indian classical music, then a nascent art form, was nurtured under the patronage of Bhupendranath Ghosh. At the time, the mid-nineteen hundreds, only baijis (courtesans) sang publicly.
Manmathanath Ghosh was the first patron to invite Irabai Bardekar, a legendary musician, to the inner wing of his home, despite protests from his wife. He considered it his honor to host talent, and the legendary sitar maestro, Ravi Shankar, met his guru Alauddin Khan there. The family’s drawing room once overflowed with music, food, hookah smoke, and attar fragrance, but in 2008 the front gate gaped open. A bony stray cow often wandered into the yard where the foyer’s Belgian mirrors collected dust.
The past always recedes. Sensible people do not let that be bothersome. The old steps aside for the new, and so it should. Yet, looking out the car window driving through India, I was stricken by the pace and brutality of this transition. Chowringhee, Kolkata’s once impressive Paris-esque boulevard, was layered in flyover roads obstructing views of British-era architectural gems such as the Indian Museum and the Geological Survey. The imposing Calcutta Club building had also lost its eminence with the intervention of the Lower Circular Road flyover. In South Kolkata, Sir Rajendranath Mookherji’s house on 7 Harrington Street awaited its then unknown fate, a silent ponderer of its owners’ declining prominence. The lure of escalating real estate prices would soon become too much. Sir B. C. Mitter’s 19 Camac Street had already been demolished, a skyscraper in its place. The same for Raja Promotho Roy Chowdhury’s 9 Hungerford Street overlooking the lake in Minto Park. In the older North Kolkata, Sir Kailash Bose’s residence would soon be sold, wiping out another reel of childhood memories for my mother and grandmother. Ramdulal Sarkar’s Beadon Street house, Digambar Mitra’s Jhamapukur house, and Manmathanath Mitra’s Shyampukur house were all still standing, but in dilapidated conditions; all of them, like elephants, would fold gently, horrendously, onto their knees.
As I was scouring for a business model with which to save these old houses that sat trembling under the dark eye of the cash-rich real estate developers, I received an e-mail from entrepreneur Hari Nair. Nair was then the CEO of HolidayIQ, an online travel company in India, studying the trends in the Indian tourism industry. One of the most interesting observations of the HolidayIQ data was that Indian travelers liked to travel in families and groups. They found that 22.14% of their audience traveled in groups of 3-5; 20.93% in groups of 6-10; and an overwhelming 40.43% traveled in groups larger than
10. A key driver for this last category was corporate groups, headed to off-sites and team- building experiences.
Another key data point in the study was that 56.62% of the travelers went for short, two- to four-day trips, while 35.84% went for one-day trips. Longer vacations were a luxury, available to a mere 7.54%. Not surprisingly, most of the shorter trips were intra- region, as the affluent urban middle class accessed quick holidays.
This data gave me the idea for our venture, Renaissance Holidays. The concept for Renaissance was to offer these expansive heritage properties as short, full-service vacation rentals. In other words, you could rent one of these houses for three to four nights, with a cook, maids, and nannies. Most of the houses had seven to ten rooms, perfect for both family vacations and corporate off-sites.
In addition, we added an extra layer of Renaissance thinking to the package. We created a network of artists, poets, musicians, and dancers with whom we held salons at each of our properties. Guests, thus, could have an eclectic, artistic experience fitted uniquely to their locale.
We scoured the red-soiled countryside of Birbhum and Purulia for the best Baul singers. In their saffron robes, ektara in hand, they sang, “Akhono to elona kaliya...” We invited qawwali groups from Pakistan. Doyens of Carnatic music graced the halls of Renaissance properties in Mysore and Madurai. Odissi dancers performed Jayadev’s Gita Govinda in Puri. Kathak dancers twirled in the halls of a Lucknow palace, evoking Satyajit Ray’s Jalshaghar.
We took our guests back in time.
In a Cooch Behar homestead, dinner crammed 20 around a table littered with round, puffy luchis, rich red goat curry, and an opulent choice of sandesh and rasogolla desserts. The children ate as fast as they could so to be excused, rushing back out into the ubiquitous smell of mangoes for intricate hide-and-seek games. They searched in the third-floor roof terrace and chased down the wrought iron spiral staircase that only the janitor was to use. They hid behind the shutters in the second-floor verandah, shrieked on the over-bridge that connected the main house to the outhouse, and were caught finally, gasping for breath in the greenhouse.
By 2012, we had acquired 200 such properties all over India. Not only did we acquire properties atop the Sahyadri hills and on the beaches of Gopalpur, but also along the narrow streets of Agra and Hyderabad. In Kolkata, for example, we acquired Sir Biren Mukherji’s Camac Street residence, as well as Manmathanath Ghose’s Pathuriaghata residence. While Sir Biren’s was a British colonial mansion, the Pathuriaghata palace sprawled in classical Indian courtyard architecture. Each house had a history, a story, captured and told through our extensive Web site. By 2016, these stories relayed the past lives of 2,000 properties. And in 2020, we have 3,000 properties owned and operated by the Renaissance Holidays group.
When we started, we were charging an average of Rs. 20,000-30,000 ($400-$600) per night for an entire property, housing anywhere between 8 and 20 people, including food. Without much difficulty, we achieved 75% occupancy across our group. Prices have risen over our decade-long journey, and we have remained very profitable, doing close to $400 million in revenues. Also key in our business model is the fact that as India’s real estate appreciates, so too do our properties. Our balance sheet, dotted with property and revenue, is incredibly impressive, offering a downright astronomical company valuation.
Today, our brand has become an international phenomenon. Travel + Leisure writes, “To experience the splendor of classical India, your trip must include a stay in one of the Renaissance properties. In quintessential style and unparalleled elegance, you will be drawn into the set of a period film, playing a role you could only dream of.”
