Word: oberoi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...continue his interrupted family vacation, his open-handed demonstration had been worth a hundred propaganda pronouncements on U.S. capitalism. "You don't have to be a millionaire to put up $5,000," said Graham, hoping to encourage other Americans into backing small Asian entrepreneurs. Said Indian Hotelman Mohan Oberoi: "Send us 5,000 more Bill Grahams...
Iron Tubs & Partnership. Thirty-five years ago Mohan Oberoi landed his first job as $5.50-a-week desk clerk in Simla's Cecil Hotel, part of the British-owned Associated Hotels Ltd. At the time, India's inns had no room service, no running water. Guests bathed in galvanized iron tubs and brought their own servants, who bedded down in the hotel halls. Oberoi learned fast; by 1927 he was chief clerk at Simla's Clarke's Hotel, and a few years later bought a one-third partnership for $2,000 down, $6,000 later...
Link No. 2 came after typhoid from polluted water killed several foreign guests in Calcutta's renowned Grand Hotel and forced it to close. As the onetime haunt of Britain's royalty and India's maharajas became known derisively as the "blackest hole of Calcutta," Oberoi saw an opportunity. He talked the hotel's liquidators into a low-cost five-year lease, although his total resources were $67 in the bank and his mortgaged Simla hotel. He tore out the Grand's rat-infested plumbing, offered typhoid-worried guests unlimited soda water even for washing...
Profit & Plumbing. In 1943 poor management in the Associated Hotels chain gave Oberoi his chance. As Associated stock sagged from $2 to 20? on the Calcutta exchange, Oberoi and some partners bought up 54% of the stock, and with it, Associated's eight hotels. Others soon followed as Oberoi improved his hotels. He put modern toilet facilities in every room, central heating and air conditioning into the Grand Hotel in Calcutta and the Imperial in New Delhi, Swiss, German and French managers-bone-bred hoteliers-into most of his hotels. By Indian standards his hotels are excellent...
Today the Oberoi chain sprawls over India, Kashmir and Pakistan, has 1,715 rooms, 4,500 employees, a yearly turnover of 355,000 guests. Profits (before taxes and depreciation) jumped to $1,250,000 last year from $950,000 in 1954. Oberoi believes that the future is even brighter. By 1960 the growing flood of tourists will require another 1,200 rooms in New Delhi alone. In the rest of India, hotel keepers will have to double the number of rooms...