Walk The Talk

Puneet Chhatwal makes all the right moves with an aim to transform IHCL into the most profitable company in the whole of Southeast Asia.

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A couple of months ago, in an exclusive Hotelier India cover interview, Puneet Chhatwal, MD & CEO of IHCL, talked about ‘Aspiration 2022’, an attempt by the management to reimagine the group’s brandscape and portfolio by sharpening and expanding it.

Chhatwal is obviously a man who walks the talk. He recently shared a review of how the company fared in the first year of its five-year plan, ‘Aspiration 2022’, and their path ahead at IHCL's second Capital Markets Day.

He elaborated upon the strategies the company adopted to reimagine their brandscape with its portfolio of distinct brands that allowed IHCL to deliver a robust development pipeline. Through this period, the company aggressively scaled up its inventory with the signing of 20 new hotels, adding approximately 3000 rooms across key cities such as London, Dubai, Makkah, New Delhi and Kathmandu. For the last nine months of the fiscal year, the company sustained a positive performance quarter-on-quarter over the last year. It reported a 230 bps increase in EBITDA margins. The debt-equity ratio has improved to 0.47 The focus is clearly on reducing IHCL's debt to below 1.99%.

IHCL has launched a hydraheaded multi-product, multisegment brandscape, which would include, within its wide ambit, its flagship Taj properties, SeleQtions, Expressions, Vivanta and Ginger.