From Manhattan to Hyderabad

He is arguably the most famous Indian friend of the Clintons in the US. He is also the non-resident Indian (NRI) who claims to run the single-largest private hotel group in New York with a total stock of over 3,000 rooms in Manhattan alone. Now, Sant Chatwal, Chairman & CEO of Hampshire Hotels and Resorts LLC, is busy implementing a plan to invest over Rs 5,000 crore to own and manage 27 hotels in India spread across 21 cities by 2011. He has just kicked off his India plans with the launch of his first hotel property in India, the Hampshire Plaza Hotel, a business hotel, in Hyderabad.

Chatwal is keen to acquire finished and semi-finished properties in most of the 21 cities he has identified across India. Says he: “While 10 of the 27 properties have already been committed, I am in talks with promoters of four to five under-development properties in various cities, one of which is valued at around Rs 200 crore.”

The group, he says, has already identified and locked land for 10 of these properties, ranging between 1 and 10 acres. This includes a 10-acre property in Bangalore and six acres in Delhi. The funding of his Rs 5,000-crore plan is 60 per cent by debt and the remaining Rs 2,000 crore by equity. Half of the equity component is from Chatwal’s own resources while existing equity partners in his US operations have committed the remaining Rs 1,000 crore.

— E. Kumar Sharma