Hot Seat

‘Wheels’ of fortune

Rajindera Kumar, president of the Hotel & Restaurant Association of Northern India and vice president of FHRAI, is a multi-faceted hotelier with over four decades of experience. Praveen K Singh highlights his contribution to the industry

With exposure to nearly all the departments of a hotel - from front office, reservations, personnel, hotel engineering, sales to banqueting, F&B production and service, Rajindera Kumar has invested nearly four decades in hospitality industry.

President of Hotel & Restaurant Association of Northern India (HRANI) and its active member for the past two decades, he is also the vice president of FHRAI and director of Ambassador Hotel in New Delhi. Kumar is also an active member of the Hotel and Restaurant Classification Committee of the Department of Tourism for the last 12 years. He earned his professional degree from School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, USA in 1964 and joined the Sheraton Hotels in Boston and later in Philadelphia. While working in the US, he conducted a feasibility study followed by a project report for renovation of 1,000 rooms in the hotel and after the approval of the project, implemented it independently in a senior capacity.

Laying the foundations

Son of a renowned hotelier late Lala Ram Pershad, who was the longest serving president of FHRAI and HRANI, Kumar returned to India in 1968 to work as joint managing director of Ambassador Hotel in New Delhi. "During this period I was responsible for the overall management of the hotel and in particular, the administration, personnel, F&B, restaurants, banquets and outdoor caterings.”

In 1970, Kumar started one of the first discotheques of international standard 'Wheels'. Two years later, he floated 'Aashna', a restaurant specialising in Mughlai cuisine and in 1976, he started 'Minute Chef', a fine dinning Continental restaurant. "All these projects were handled in independent capacity, right from designing, menu planning to staffing and kitchen layout," he claims. During 1982 Asiad Games, Kumar independently redesigned the entire Hotel Ambassador with a complete marble layout. Consequent to the partnership with the Indian Hotels Company in 1990, Ambassador Hotel became a sought-after business hotel in Delhi. "Now, I am actively involved as a working director of the board-managed company at Ambassador Hotel," he adds. Other than that Kumar has been on the board of Haryana Tourism Corporation and is currently on the board of governors of IHM Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi.

Taxing challenges

Speaking on the critical issues of the hospitality industry, Kumar recounts, "The industry is faced with not just opportunities, but challenges too, which limits growth. One of the main problems in our industry is the lack of co-ordination between various states in their taxation laws. Both the central and state governments have been constantly burdening the industry through luxury tax, taxes on both foreign and domestic liquor and toll taxes on transportation." He explains that tax collection and its utilisation are very crucial for any economy, but the basis of taxation has to be simplified and justified to all concerned. Talking on his most favoured subject in hospitality industry, he says, "HR is the most important issue at this moment in the industry where so many new hotels are coming up. Therefore there is a challenge to generate a good and capable team."