Amruda Nair

A Chip Off the Old Block

A third-generation hotelier rises. Sharp, smart, intelligent, passionate and gently ambitious, that’s our girl. A combination that sets Amruda on course

Good morning, world! Here I come

Text & Photographs: Farzana Contractor
 
Amruda Nair is a quietly confident, young woman. She knows where she is going, calm and poised, she is not exactly in a tearing hurry. Fact is, she knows what she wants and more importantly she knows she will get there. And why is that? Quite simply because she is willing to work hard. As she has been for these past seven years, on projects which are personal and close to her heart.

So what has Amruda Nair, a third-generation hotelier, the daughter of Vivek Nair and granddaughter of the late and legendary hotelier, Capt CPK Nair of ‘Leela’ been up to?

Let’s get to know her.

Amruda has a strong and honest presence. By which I mean she speaks with clarity, both with heart and mind in a simple, straightforward and refreshing manner. Presents facts as they are. No frilly talk, no pretense, comfortable in her skin. With zero sense of entitlement, she could be your girl next door. Pleasant and pleasing, well-mannered with the right social graces.

But then she has always been this way. I remember her standing respectfully next to her father (who along with his brother Dinesh, wore the Leela mantle) at cocktail parties, speaking little, but very intelligently. She was very young and being groomed for the hospitality industry. Those days she was handling accounts. I was so impressed by her demeanour.

Cut to current times, I still am. Two decades on, having worked in 12 countries across various continents, Amruda has taken it in her stride that the Leela chain of hotels, barring the flagship hotel in Bombay, has changed hands. She is not really affected by the loss. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that long before the change happened, Amruda was already a working girl. On her own ventures, her own steam, her own merit, her own terms.

That’s right. Barely 30, she was in Qatar, based there and working on a hotel coming up in Saudi Arabia. She was in charge of building a 661-room hotel in Mecca. “Oh my God, I can’t tell you what that experience was like. I owe so much to Sheikh Faisal Al Thani of the Royal Qatari family with whom I was in a joint venture to build The Aiana Mecca. He had so much faith in me and this external validation, which came from someone outside the India circle, who understood the business of hospitality, instilled tremendous confidence in me. It was beautiful, and I was very motivated, wanting to do my very best. I have to give the Sheikh full credit. He gave me a platform like no other. He was in his 70s, I in my 30s, yet he treated me like an equal, put me in full charge. The exposure and the learning which came as a result held me in such good stead that I am able to do what I am doing today,” says Amruda, with a face flushed pink with joy.

Before I come to what she is doing today, allow me to give you the full picture of her time in the Middle East. Amruda stayed in Doha for three years, hopping across to Jeddah frequently for meetings. She would wear the full abaya, in keeping with the norms of the country. Since Mecca is out of bounds for non-Muslims the meetings would be held in Doha or Jeddah. She was supervising the entire project through videography which her team would present to her. Amruda says the learning curve was immense, adding great value to her sense of being a hotelier. But unfortunately it all came crashing down when relations between Qatar and UAE soured due to the huge diplomatic rift initiated by Saudi Arabia and watched aghast by the world. This created such a turmoil in the region, Amruda found the employment license of Aiana, her company being cancelled and bank accounts frozen. She had no choice but to return home to India, more than a bit crestfallen.

“Yes, that was bad and sad, though the hotel in Mecca did open eventually. But to tell you the truth, after the completion of this project I was already planning on getting back to India to start on a new dream project. I was yearning to do boutique hotels in our country. Dive into uncharted waters, meaning places off the beaten tracks. I wanted to send Indians on holidays to places they wouldn’t normally go. Like in Himachal most holiday-makers would head for Shimla or Kullu and Manali. But I picked Palampur.

Everyone knows of Palanpur, but not this one with an ‘m’. I was told it’s a risk. But I went ahead with Palampur, the first project of my ‘Araiya’. And I am elated to say, we did it! It was a success. People love it. Up 5000 feet, just 25 keys, it’s a beautiful property perched pretty at the edge of a Rhododendron forest. You can simply go hiking up the hill from the backgate!” Amruda can’t contain her happiness that she overcame the challenge of creating a new destination with her very first project. Strangely the timing worked. Araiya Palampur opened just six months before COVID hit the world and once the world opened up people were more than happy to go where there were no crowds, spend time at small and charming properties right in the thick of nature.

In the last five years, Amruda got four properties operational. Six are currently in various stages of progress, with two scheduled to open in December this year. These are in Himachal, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Kerala.

So how does it work? What’s the format? “It’s purely a management contract agreement that we work on,” explains Amruda. “There are first-time hoteliers who are keen to develop their ancestral properties. The owners do their own investment but under support and guidance from us. We help them build correctly. I have a team which is technically very sound, architects, engineers, etc. We do the design programming in terms of area allocation, what exactly to build, how much front of house, how much back, size of the room, service area, storage, pantry, the works. These are the greenfield projects. We also undertake brown field projects where there are existing properties being run by first-time hoteliers who for whatever reason soon give up and want their family estate being managed by professionals. We help bring the property up to the mark with specifications drawn up by Araiya. Once the properties are ready, old or new, they are handed over to us, the brand operators. I am glad about this set up because being asset light it helps me grow faster and better. It helps me concentrate on my core strength, which is resources, expertise, staff training, event curation and so on.”

What certainly goes in Amruda’s favour, giving her a competitive edge is the fact that she can look at an MIS from an owner’s perspective. So she can understand an owner’s angst, having worked at The Leela hotels. Quite by chance she had also gained experience working on hotels operating under a management contract. You see, after she returned from Singapore in 2010 where she was working as an analyst and a consultant selling hotel properties to big time investors in the Middle East, Far East and South East Asia, she dived straight into looking after The Leela Gurgaon which was the chain’s first management contract property. This gave her a new insight, helping her understand the workings of being a brand operator, which she now successfully applies to her projects.

“That’s so true. My clients know I know what it is to be on the other side. So I would never ask them to do something I wouldn’t do for my own hotel,” says the young entrepreneur, who had the courage to get into a start-up, five years ago. Today she has up and running charming resorts, the smallest being the six-room property in Rishikesh to the largest, a 48-villa property in the Gir forest region.

What excites Amruda is the soon-to- be-ready-and-launched resort in Kerala, Paithalmala near Kannur, the hometown of the Nairs. “It’s the Kodagu landscape, beautiful, just 18 rooms set in 30 acres of spice plantations full of swaying palms and betelnut trees. I feel pleased since it’s the opening of a new destination and will be the only product there!” Closer home she has another resort in the works, at Tapola Lake in what is being termed as New Mahabaleshwar. There is furious activity in this region since it has projects by Eknath Shinde, the Deputy CM of Maharashtra, also coming up.

But Amruda’s heart now beats for two other parts of India; Rajasthan, where she is on the lookout for places small or big and the North East of India; for which she gets a big thumbs up from me. I think it’s a side of incredible India that is hardly explored. “The North East certainly is unexplored, untapped. I would love to open it for a whole new market, not just those living in Calcutta. There is so much to offer there now that connectivity has improved with good roads, new airports. Look how easy it is to fly into Siliguri these days. While I am all for palaces, luxury doesn’t just mean that. It can be the quiet luxury of space and natural unexploited landscapes. Haven’t found anything yet but I really hope I do. A good, sustainable location here would be just perfect for my soul,” says the woman who knows the names of the goats in the village near her resort in Palampur.

Fit and fine, is how I feel	Cheers to cosy boutique hotels	Carving my own niche

That truly is Amruda’s goal. To find spots she can explore and help travellers explore. At this point, thinking how hard she is working, re-applying herself to building a new career from scratch, I couldn’t help but ask Amruda her feelings about having her legacy snatched away, in a way, for had Leela not been sold, she could have been the heiress to a hotel empire along with her sister Aishwarya and cousin Samyukta. Here is Amruda’s spontaneous and honest reply, “No, actually I don’t feel bad about that. I don’t miss that loss. I am actually enjoying the freedom. Without meaning to belittle the great memories I have with Leela, no matter what I would have done, it would always have meant working on someone else’s initiation and passion. Now I am following my own dream, carving my own niche, making my own mark.”

But she does not take lightly the legacy left by her visionary grandfather, the great Captain Nair, doyen of the industry. Especially one that left an indelible mark on her psyche, in her DNA. “How can I ever take it lightly? My granddad was a legend. From him I learnt innumerable things; how to tell a story, how to brand a product, the nuances of service and selfless devotion to the customer. Look at his sense, the distinct idea he had of how each of his palace hotels should be, was so remarkable, be it Leela Palace in Udaipur or Leela Palace Bangalore, or any of the others.”

“I have to add, from him I learnt how to take risks; remember, he was 65 when he launched his first hotel, so surely I can undertake challenges in my 40s. He was also responsible for teaching all of us how to accept change and I am doing just that. I truly didn’t need to be given a business on a platter. Family traditions and values, a sound upbringing has taught us well, giving us the ability to work and create our own brands,” she concludes, disarmingly.

Well, Gen III is proving it. Samyukta, her cousin, is doing well with her restaurants in London and Aishwarya, her sister, likewise with the restaurants in Malta and Portugal. “Your parents must be so proud of you…,” I tell Amruda. She laughs and says, “I am not sure. For the past five years they were wondering what I am up to! But yes, now that they are seeing the fruits of my labour, they are getting a perspective. In fact, this Father’s Day, dad and I went to one of my sites. And recently, for her 70th birthday, my ma went with her friends to Palampur and they enjoyed themselves thoroughly. They even went trekking and river-bathing!”

It’s time now to take a break from India and go over to Europe, Malta to be specific, where, hold your breath, Amruda has opened three restaurants! She started this venture seven years ago which she ran hands-on. But now that she is back in Bombay full-time, to run Araiya, her sister Aishwarya looks after the projects. “How did restaurants happen?” I ask Amruda quite surprised.

“I shall tell you exactly how,” says Amruda, who I notice has suddenly become very bubbly and even more spontaneous. Perhaps it’s the naughty and luxurious act of drinking champagne in the afternoon, from the bottle we popped in celebration of a successful photoshoot, which Amruda was a bit apprehensive about. “As it happened, I went to Malta with my Qatari partner to check some hotel-building prospects. He owns a bank there and has great connections and thought having his own brand of hotels would be good since Malta had just become the EU capital. That, however, did not happen, but I fell in love with the country and had to find an excuse, a reason to come back and spend more time. It’s a tiny island and tourism is big, especially from within Europe. I thought an Indian restaurant would be just fine and got to work on the idea and it happened!”

That’s how Naanbar started in 2019, followed by Chatterbox – a 100+ seater restaurant in the promenade of a hotel, overlooking a famous beach, and then the newest one, Mez, inspired by cuisine from the coast of South East Asia. Add to this the Nair sisters also have a successful outdoor catering outfit. “That just fell into my lap. A lot of well-to-do Indians living in the UK come to Malta which is a great wedding destination. We have access to many historic sites and it all works brilliantly. I actually have some super Gujarati and Punjabi menus!”

But it doesn’t stop there, Amruda also has a restaurant in Porto, Portugal. Dramatic, large, all of 8,000 sq. ft. and a very unique concept. It’s created inside a 100-year-old marble factory, obviously now defunct, but sounds very interesting, especially what they serve there. You, my dear readers, will just have to wait for when I land up in Portugal to bring back more in-depth details about this restaurant.

In the meanwhile, let’s get to know the non-work side of Amruda. “How do you relax, what are your hobbies, how do you have fun?” “I go kitesurfing!” comes the simple answer. Yup, the girl’s a fish. “I love swimming and all sports associated with the sea,” she adds. She kiteboards in Tanzania, Zanzibar to be specific. It involves the harness on the waist being attached to a kite, while standing on a surfboard. The wind comes along and lifts you forward, not making you fly, but have you skimming the water. Sounds exhilarating. When she is not surfing, she is diving. Wherever she can. She loves to do it, especially in Malta, with its clear blue waters and the opportunity to check out the many shipwrecks lying at the bottom of the ocean, the remnants from WWII. “Malta is a treasure trove of shipwrecks. It was the most heavily bombed place on Earth. I have to say I find the experience of exploring rather thrilling. The last time I was there, I was most startled; a huge octopus came out from inside the wreck, where many sea creatures have now set up their home.”

But after all is done and dusted, where does it leave the highly eligible Amruda Nair, the charming, good-looking and ever-smiling girl? Any scope for a good beau, marriage on the cards? Any happily everafter story? My parting question leaves her gurgling with laughter. “Oh no, not that, I really don’t need to check that box. I am single, very busy, very happy!” she exclaims. “If anything, I am looking for marriages with palaces in Rajasthan or other wonderful parts of India. Should you know any of that, tell me!” she retorts. She has me stumped, I can tell you that. Good luck girl, go for it.

Rajasthan is where I look forward to expanding	Love of my life!	Our lovely home terrace with The Leela in the background