As The Trident Gurgaon Turns 10, It Eyes Bigger Share of MICE Pie and Prepares to Go Organic

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I STILL remember the evening, ten years ago, when I walked into what was then The Trident Hilton Gurgaon, getting that wow feeling as I beheld the aquamarine water body (I am told it holds 800,000 litres of constantly recycled water) reflecting the frisky flames of the mashaals (fire-lit torches) lighting up the entrance courtyard of the hotel, which stood out as a showpiece in a sleepy town that was just becoming known as the back-end capital of the world.

Nitesh Gandhi, who was the F&B
manager of The Trident Gurgaon
ten years ago and is now general
manager, explains why the hotel is
No. 1 in Gurgaon on TripAdvisor

As I was ushered in through the ornamental doors that towered over me like Aladdin's genie, I was received by Kapil Chopra, whom I had known from his stint at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, where he led the prestigious presidential suite project; David Mathews, who had moved in from the salubrious setting of the Wildflower Hall in Shimla to take over as Executive Assistant Manager (F&B); and Nitesh Gandhi, the F&B Manager. That was ten years ago, when the only competition The Trident had was the older and definitely dowdy The Bristol, which didn't look like a hotel of any consequence in the best of times. I wondered why P.R.S. Oberoi, a hospitality mogul in a class of his own, had chosen to open such a magnificent hotel with suitably appointed rooms -- a Vilas and not just another Trident -- in the middle of a wilderness.

Ten years on, I don't have to ask this question. The Trident Gurgaon, which celebrates its tenth birthday this evening, has been the biggest gainer of Gurgaon's stunning growth. I am sure the staff must have lost count of the number of Fortune 500 company board meetings they have hosted, or the international corporate top guns who have walked the hotel's gleaming corridors. Just in the recent past, the hotel has hosted the global boards of Microsoft, American Express, McKinsey and Harley Davidson. It was also the first hotel in Gurgaon to host an international conference -- that of the foreign ministers of 51 Indian Ocean rim nations -- organised by the Ministry of External Affairs. To provide security to the visiting dignitaries, Delhi Police, in an unprecedented move, had to get its jurisdiction extended to Gurgaon!

The Trident Gurgaon has set the gold standards for a market that has grown from 350 rooms (including 136 of its own) to more than 5,000, and is waiting for another 3,500 to open up at the New Delhi Aerocity through this year and the next. At a time when hotels are engaged in a pricing bloodbath, it has held on to an 80 per cent occupancy; the hotel's February 2014 revenue per available room (RevPAR) -- Rs 9,935 -- is 12.5 per cent higher than the previous year's figure and it is all set to close this financial year with 10 per cent higher gross operating profit. With The Oberoi Gurgaon coming up next door, and with the two hotels working on a "one complex, one sales team" strategy, they are now eyeing with confidence the competitive market cutting across segments. What I thought would be a real estate disaster has turned out to be an industry success story.

"Our Chairman has a sharp eye for locations. See how The Oberoi New Delhi is located right next to the city's oldest golf course. It has ensured, besides offering a great view to guests, the hotel has no competition in its neighbourhood," says Gandhi, as nattily turned out as ever, as we settle down for a chat in one corner of the pool, completely insulated from the noise and confusion on one of the NCR's busiest (and till recently, clogged) arterial roads, just a couple of hundred metres away. The Trident Gurgaon doesn't exaggerate when it claims to be a business hotel that "makes you forget you're on business".

The hotel's main corridor oozes the warmth and
grandeur responsible for making it the 'business
hotel where you forget you are on business'

Ten years seems like a lifetime. Gandhi is now the general manager of the hotel. And he's not the only one who has risen in the corporate food chain. Kapil Chopra, whose ease with words matches his mastery over numbers, is the President of The Oberoi Group. David Mathews, who handed over charge to Gandhi, is the general manager of The Oberoi Gurgaon next door. Rathijit Dasgupta, who started as a steward at Cilantro (Gandhi remembers training him how to balance service trays), The Trident Gurgaon's multiple-award-winning all-day restaurant, is the food and beverage manager of The Oberoi Gurgaon. Gaurav, the then duty manager, is the rooms division manager. Aafreen, the then front office assistant, is the production manager. And Jasbir, also a front office assistant, is now the front office manager. If The Trident is Gurgaon's No. 1 hotel on TripAdvisor with a 96 per cent approval rating, it is because of these people who have hitched their fortunes to it, a rare feature in an industry prone to a high attrition rate.

Gandhi attributes The Trident's success to three features of The Oberoi's work culture that flows down from the man presiding over the empire. "We have been taught to develop an astute sense of detailing, never to make comprises, and to hire the right people," says Gandhi. The right people, with the right empowerment, can create "magical stories for our guests". He mentions the instance of a top executive of a leading management consultancy who was a regular at a neighbouring hotel. Gandhi managed to influence him to transfer his account to The Trident Gurgaon. Today, the guest doesn't go anywhere else because he swears by Fazil, the gym instructor. "When service is at this level, then business comes automatically," says Gandhi. "The standards have to be high when you work for a legend," he adds.

As Gandhi gears up for what he perceives as a "tough fight" in the next three years, he has set three goals for the hotel:

* Go for the upper end of the MICE (Meetings Incentives Conventions Exhibitions) business more aggressively, pitching for heads of state visits, Fortune 500 company board meetings and product launches. At the moment, MICE provides 18 per cent of the hotel's business, compared with 75 per cent from corporate clients and 7 per cent from the leisure segment. "Now that the Gurgaon toll is out, we will go for the Delhi business," Gandhi says. "And we are already tapping the Mumbai market."

* Reduce waste for healthier bottomline. "Our Chairman keeps emphasising that economising is not about cutting costs, but about eliminating waste," Gandhi says. He points outs that the hotel's boilers and gas burners (in the mashaals and the kitchens) are moving on to piped natural gas (PNG).
It has become necessary, he says, because of the erratic electricity supply in the summer months and the cost of diesel (used to run generators) shooting up from Rs 44 to Rs 57 in one year. The average per day requirement of diesel, which is 1,022 litres, shoots up to 2,200 litres during the summer months, which see six to eight months of power failure per day.

* Turn organic. This is the mission Gandhi has set for the kitchens of the hotel. "Give us three months and you'll start seeing the difference," he says, adding: "In a competitive market, if you don't differentiate, you die." That seems like a faraway prospect for a hotel grounded in the finest values of the industry.

Big O Gastronomy: Masumi Sake and Jason Oh's Six-Course Dinner at Akira Back

A shorter version of this article appeared this morning in Fortune Cookie, my fortnightly column for Mail Today. Click on http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=1322014 and go to Page 17 to read the original.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masumi's Keith Norum (third from left) with
Ankur Chawla, author and beverage director of
JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity, and the
Akira Back chefs, Kurt Nyren and Jason Oh

KEITH NORUM has the looks of a liberal arts professor and a CV that says he read English Literature at UCLA and then relocated to an Alpine village named Suwa in the Nagano prefecture of Japan. That was 20 years ago, when he was hired as a cross-cultural management trainer by the world's largest maker of computer printers, Seiko Epson Corporation. Why, then, was the Californian at Akira Back, the New Delhi Aerocity JW Marriott's trending Japanese restaurant, holding forth on the virtues of Masumi?

Masumi is one of Japan's top sake brands -- two gold medals separate it from the No. 1, Urakasumi, in the annals of Japan's century-old annual sake awards -- and it has been brewed at the same kura by Suwa's Miyasaka family since 1662. Masumi means 'truth' and there's a story behind the name. The Miyasakas have been traditionally supplying sake to Suwa's historic Shinto shrine, which has the 1,200-year-old bronze 'Mirror of Truth', the source of the brew's name. The Shinto regard sake and salt as the two purifying elements in this imperfect world. Well, as they say with apologies to the Latin masters, 'in sake veritas' ('in sake there is the truth')!

Norum's relationship with Masumi started when the company's president, Naotaka Miyasaka, who represents his family's 23rd generation, returned home after completing his higher studies in America. He needed to keep in touch with English, and Suwa is a small place, so it was easy for him to find Norum. The two became good friends and eventually Miyasaka hired Norum to head his overseas operations.

Life may present unexpected twists, but little has changed in the art of making sake. It is brewed only in the three months between December and February, because the temperature in these months is just right for sake production, and each stage is carefully calibrated. Water and rice, Norum explained, are the two critical elements -- sake is 80 per cent water and 16 per cent alcohol extracted from milled rice.

The water, drawn from mountain springs, must have a low calcium content, because it slows down the metabolism of yeast, giving it longer life and the ability to extend the fermentation period. Extended fermentation (six weeks in the case of Masumi) produces alcohol with a complex structure and superior aroma profile.

Norum was sharing his wealth of knowledge with me over a most spectacular dinner prepared by Jason Oh. Like his boss Akira Back, Jason is a Korean-American, but he grew up in New York, not Denver, and has taken to Delhi like a fish to water. We started with yellowtail jalapeno with yuzu (citrus) soy -- hot and tart in equal measure -- which Norum paired with the fresh and elegant Sanka ('mountain flower'), which, surprisingly, has a seductive floral bouquet and tropical fruit aromas. The JW Marriot's F&B Director, Tarun Bhatia, said it tasted like green ber, which made me crave for some of this elusive fruit. This is ber season, isn't it?

Next on the menu was an Akria Back classic, hot oil-seared salmon with mixed peppers, lotus chips (I could have these forever!) and yuzu sauce, which paired very well with the more austere and dry Karakuchi Kippon. "It is as dry as we go," Norum said about the sake, adding that it is made at Fujimi kura, which was built in the 1980s atop a mountain overlooking Suwa. Fujimi's water source, interestingly, remains a mystery.

Rice used to produce Masumi's sake is sourced only from two places -- Nagano and Hyogo, which is also famous for the marbled beef of Kobe. Sourcing is important because sake rice is expensive and sake rice is special because its high protein content is uniformly concentrated in the outer layers.

It is the extent to which the rice is milled (to remove the proteins) that determines a sake's place in the caste system -- 60-70 per cent is good enough for the standard or futushu sake; 50-60 per cent for the premium or ginjo range; and 40-50 per cent for the super premium or daiginjo variant. Brewing sake is perfect science and the fate of the brew hangs in balance every day it is in production. Once milled, sake rice is soaked exactly for 8:30 to 9:45 minutes -- it can't be a second more or less, which is why the sake master times every operation with a stop watch!

As I understood the intricacies of the production process, Jason produced a delectable melange of sous vide tenderloin with wasabi soy sauce, mushrooms, potato puree and blanched asparagus, dressed in the Korean sweet and spicy cho jang sauce. To go with it, Norum produced the much-acclaimed Tokusen, which he said was a honjozo, that is, a sake with a little bit of neutral alcohol added before the rice mash is filtered. Well, that's another sub-category of sake. Whether it's ginjo or futushu, your sake has to be either a honjozo or a junmai (no alcohol added during production). Tokusen can also be served warm, which made me ask about the protocol to be followed with warm sake. Norum said drinking warm sake was like washing a plate with an oil stain with hot water. Reserve the pleasure for oily preparations such as tempura.

I digested all this information with the sake-steamed flounder (thank God for another fish being added to Delhi's limited repertoire!) served with baby bok choy, nori seaweed and black bean yuzu sauce. The Kippuku Kinju ('Golden Happiness'), a junmai ginjo, served with it was deliciously fruity and full-bodied with a clean finish that made me sit back for a moment and savour the sensation. I had more of it as we went through the chef's selection of sushi and rolls, and the dessert selection -- the chef's take on the Snickers bar and coconut sorbet .

Masumi produces two million bottles of sake in a year, down from 2.5 million six or seven years ago, because the consumption of table sake has been dropping steadily as people trade up to the premium and super-premium categories. But it is table sake that gets brewed first because sake rice is expensive and only best is kept for the upper-end brews. Unsurprisingly, Masumi consumes substantial quantities of rice. A kilo of the finest, after all, goes into the making of each bottle of its sake.

Groupon India CEO Bets Big on F&B and Sees Internet on Mobile as the Top Story of 2014

Ankur Warikoo shares the spectacular success story of Group India, which in three years has extended to 12 cities, signed up 6,500-plus unique merchants (including 56 per cent repeats), and almost every major hotel and restaurant in the country

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN Groupon India teamed up with Delhi Gourmet Club last year to launch Delhicious Week, the challenge to Citibank's three-city Restaurant Week India, which is entering its fourth year this March, few gave it much of a chance. It was a one-city affair and five restaurants signed up for it. By the end of Delhicious Week, the turnout, as well as the exposure they got on the Delhi Gourmet Club's Facebook community page, took the participating restaurants by surprise. Instantly, the word spread in the industry that Delhicious Week was here to stay -- and grow into serious competition for Restaurant Week India.

Sure enough, Delhicious Week returned this year with a bigger footprint. Eleven restaurants, an equal mix of five-star and stand-alone addresses, signed up. Between February 1 and February 6, the Delhicious Week days, more than twice the number of diners, compared with the turnout for the inaugural round of the event last year, showed up at the participating restaurants. The restaurants had been hand-picked by the Delhi Gourmet Club because of their reputation, and each offered a three-course special menu plus signature soft beverage at prices starting from Rs 999, depending on the meal time and day of the week.

For Ankur Warikoo, the Asia-Pacific Head of Groupon, the deal-of-the-day Chicago-based website that has grown into a $1.84 billion business globally in six years, ideas such as Delhicious Week keep powering his e-commerce company's growing business presence in the Indian market. They create excitement for his customers, who are looking for deals that are more than just discounts.

Ankur Warikoo has established
Groupon India as a significant
player in the country's growing
e-commerce economy. Here
he explains why the website
is continually gaining traction.

In the case of the Delhicious Week, the difference was the menu that each restaurant especially offered to the guests who arrived with Groupon coupons. One of the participating restaurants, K3 at the JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity, even went to the extent of offering its entire buffet at the steeply discounted price of a Delhicious Week coupon. Of course, Groupon India's biggest gamble was to sell a kilo of onions for Rs 9, which was a tenth of the market price, at the peak of the controversy over the skyrocketing price of the tuber. Within 44 minutes, 3,000 kilos were sold, and the by the time the deal was closed, more than 8,000 kilos had flown off Groupon's virtual shelves. Ideas such as these drive Groupon's business.

Warikoo, who's also the CEO (or "chief customer care executive") of Groupon India,  calls the website's model "the last mile of advertising". Groupon not only allows a business to showcase itself, but also goes a step further by converting the intent to buy created by the advert into an actual purchase. In doing so, Groupon has created a new e-commerce category of buying local services online. And as its name suggests (it is a portmanteau of the words "group coupon"), the website leverages the concept of "group buying" to drive new customers to businesses at a fraction of the cost of conventional advertising, even as it gives its online users a platform for securing discounts on items as varied as restaurant meals and spa outings.

"We only run limited-period promotions so as not to make any brand appear cheap," says Warikoo, who's an alumnus of Hindu College, Michigan State University (East Lansing) and the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad). What Groupon does, explains Warikoo, is get each participating business a minimum number of customers and the discount it offers is actually "the cost of acquiring new customers". There are no charges upfront, so the business pays "only when the money is in".

Unsurprisingly, Groupon India, which has expanded to 12 cities, has signed up 6,500-plus "unique merchants" across the country and 56 per cent of them are repeats. "All premium five-star hotels, barring those of the ITC, have worked with us or continue to do so," Warikoo adds triumphantly. The demographic behind Groupon India's success is the 25-38 age group, which, Warikoo says, is more likely to eat out or hang out at malls with friends. That may explain why 48 per cent of Groupon India's revenues come from food and beverage, and another 30 per cent from the wellness segment.

Groupon customers, says Warikoo, who's the only Kashmiri Pandit I know who's a vegetarian, scout for the most valuable experiences from the best brands. So, when the site offered the Nirula's classic, Hot Chocolate Fudge, for Rs 79, instead of its regular price of Rs 120, as many as 6,000 got sold in a week. And when the chholey-bhature of Kanha Sweets of Jaipur was made available for Rs 19, instead of Rs 49, the clicks on the 'Buy' button wouldn't stop -- 500 portions got sold in just two hours. So, how is Groupon India different from, say, a Snapdeal? Snapdeal, Warikoo says, pointing to a critical differentiator, is about products; Groupon is about services.

2014, according to Warikoo, will see internet on mobile becoming the game changer by enabling a website like Groupon to serve customers real-time. Sixteen per cent of all Groupon India transactions, in fact, are already taking place on this route. Warikoo expects this business segment to grow. "With 80 million units, India is the world's third largest smartphone market," he points out. "And by adding 8 million units each month, India looks set to overtake the US market, which has 140 million smartphones."

Groupon's India story started with the acquisition of a Kolkata-based deals website called Sosasta.com in April 2011. The name didn't convey the right value proposition, so the site was re-launched as Crazeal.com in October 2011, before legal issues led to it being re-christened Groupon India. It's been less than three years and the numbers look good for Warikoo and his team. And he's not exaggerating when he says, "The Groupon India story looks very positive."

TWO LESSER-KNOWN FACTOIDS ABOUT ANKUR WARIKOO

* Before taking charge of scripting Groupon's India story in 2011, Warikoo joined two other Indian School of Business graduates to launch a website incubation company called Accentium ("the word means nothing!" he says). They were running six websites, including the phenomenally successful SecondShaadi.com and Gaadi.com, the car purchase and sale site, which the company sold to Ibibo.

* Warikoo and his team work out of an three-storied, open-plan office in Saket, and when they go to Goa for their annual get-together, even the janitors and parking attendants aren't left behind. Who each of them gets to share a room with is decided by a draw of lots. Last year, Warikoo had the parking attendant as his roommate. Here's a real aam aadmi CEO, who lives by the principles he espouses.