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Shruti Shibulal, daughter of SD Shibulal, co-founder and former CEO of Infosys, is looking to take her hospitality brand Tamara global.
“I would like to take the best of what we have in India in terms of our service culture and guest experience to many more places around the world,” she told BusinessLine .
Asked which is the first global location for Tamara, she said: “I really haven’t pinned down a location, but my vision for Tamara is to see it as a global brand.”
Tamara Real Estate Holding & Development, the hospitality venture of Innovations Investment Management (Shibulal’s family office that takes care of the family’s assets and wealth), currently owns real estate in India and abroad.
The company owns land in Kodaikanal and Madurai in Tamil Nadu; Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Guruvayur and Muhamma in Kerala; and Whitefield and Jayanagar in Bangalore. It also has real estate assets in the US and Germany.
Stating that an investment of ₹80 crore, excluding cost of land, is being pumped into the next Tamara project – a five-star, city business hotel with 200 rooms in Thiruvananthapuram– she said, the next project at Kodaikanal is still at the conception stage and would be followed by other hotels at locations where the company owns land.
The first Tamara luxury resort, located within a 170-acre coffee and cardamom plantation in Coorg, was inaugurated in April 2012. Describing Tamara as an upscale and experiential hospitality brand, Shruti said: “We have a diverse property portfolio, including a luxury resort in Coorg, a five-star business hotel coming up in Thiruvananthapuram and Lilac which is an upscale hostel with 28 rooms targeted at long-stay corporate guests and others that will be inaugurated later this month in Jayanagar (Bangalore).”
She is using her experience in wealth management at Merrill Lynch, New York, to manage her own personal wealth, which includes a 0.66 per cent stake in Infosys.
“I am on the lookout for interesting start-ups to invest in. I primarily invest in people and not in their game-changing ideas because I think ideas can evolve over time, it is the people behind the start-up that are much more important to me.”
She has invested in Food Lovers Magazine and in a fashion e-commerce website called Trendseeders.com.
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