Beyond The Lobby by Emversity

The Hospitality Paradox: Larger Hotels Pipelines. Bigger Talent Gap.

• Emversity • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Can an industry grow faster than its talent?

For Dilip Puri, that question became the defining challenge that ultimately led him to dedicate his second innings to hospitality education.

After leading teams and businesses across some of the world's most respected hospitality brands, Dilip became convinced that the future of the industry would depend on one thing above all else: people.

In this episode of Beyond the Lobby, Dilip Puri, Founder & Executive Chairman of the Indian School of Hospitality, reflects on the observation that led him from hotels to higher education, the leadership lessons that shaped his career, and why he believes hospitality's future will be defined not by infrastructure or investment, but by talent.

In this episode:

- Why talent is becoming hospitality's biggest growth constraint 
- The lesson from P.R.S. Oberoi that shaped Dilip's leadership philosophy 
- The human skills AI cannot replace: empathy, communication, and emotional intelligence 
 - How hospitality education needs to evolve 
- Why hospitality is one of the best foundations for leadership and entrepreneurship 
- The second innings philosophy 

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SPEAKER_02

Hello and welcome to another episode of Beyond the Lobby. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Adeleep Puri, the founder and executive chairman of Indian School of Hospitality.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the show, Delip. Thank you, Vivi. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02

So if we look at the hospitality sector in India today, I think we are in the middle of a structural paradox. So on one hand, the hotel pipelines are exploding, but the challenges that the sector is facing in terms of future growth is actually not capital and it's also not demand. Surprisingly, it's talent. You were a hotelier, at what point of time did you realize or you could foresee this becoming a pain point and a critical enabler for the sector?

SPEAKER_01

One of uh my oft-repeated quotes in our industry, the battle for market share will be fought as much over the customer as it will be over talent. I think the prophecy is what you're saying today. And actually, it was perhaps that recognition that early in time that stored the first seeds of what I'm doing today.

SPEAKER_02

Playbook creating hospitality leaders for India and the globe, that playbook did not exist, I would argue that.

SPEAKER_01

So to me, I first tried to envision what is the graduate profile I want out of this college and work backwards from there to say now what kind of a curriculum to have, what kind of courses to offer, what kind of faculty to have, what kind of infrastructure to have. People will never remember what you said, and people will never remember what you did. People will remember how you made them feel. Human interface and the skills required to make you uniquely different in order to do that is what I think we're trying to inculcate in our students.

SPEAKER_02

So if we look at the hospitality sector in India today, I think we are in the middle of a structural paradox. So on one hand, uh the hotel pipelines are exploding. Uh I guess we are going to add more hotel rooms in the next five years than what we added in the uh in the last 15 years. Uh every segment within the uh with the hotel or tourism industry, if you look at domestic, if you look at religious, wellness, luxury, every segment is scaling up quite well. But the challenges that the sector is facing in terms of uh let's say the future growth is actually not capital and it's also not demand. Surprisingly, it's talent, which is and I use the word surprisingly because in a country like India, where we are a nation of 140 crore people with the demographic dividend, uh, which we want to believe is our advantage, it's very counterintuitive to believe that we are adding hotels faster than we are adding the talent to run those hotels. And that's the structural paradox that we are going to focus this podcast on. Uh hospitality education to a large extent, even in India today, is stuck in, I would say, in a world which no longer exists. A world before digital guest journeys uh became a reality, a world before international standards uh truly arrived in India, a world before asset-light hotel models and uh let's say operationally more efficient hotel models became a reality. So, this is the paradox that we are going to unpack on uh this episode, and who could be a better guest to help us unpack it than the gentleman we have here on the show as our guest. Uh please join me in welcoming Mr. Dileep Puri, the founder and executive chairman of uh Indian School of Hospitality.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the show, Dileep. Thank you, Vek. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02

Uh so Deleep, uh uh of course, uh uh we will unpack the problem statement, but before that, in these conversations, uh I like to start from where it all started, uh, which means your formative years and the years where uh you know some influences led you to uh devote the next few decades of your life to this career. And that's where the most insights and the inspiration behind founders, operators, successful leaders like you uh come from. So would uh love to understand uh how was it growing up and what led you to take uh hospitality as a career choice in your early years?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I've often called myself uh an accidental hotelier. Uh growing up um in a middle class armed forces family, um it was always uh very clear that your education uh will be critical to who you become and what you do. Fortunately, my dad never uh even encouraged me to join the armed forces, so that was uh good in many ways. But when I finished high school, uh like many students even of today's generation, really didn't know what to do, had no idea uh what kind of career I wanted to have, um, uh was just happy in the space I was. Uh but my sister had done her graduation in economics, so my father thought that was a great um stream to study, so I went and did uh an economics honors degree from Delhi University. And as I finished my undergrad, I'd had such a wonderful time in college, just having fun. Uh, not necessarily I was I was reasonably proficient academically, but certainly I wasn't any outlier in terms of um uh a star, but I uh really enjoyed uh public speaking, I really enjoyed um uh you know in universities, these festivals, going to all doing these debating in just a minute and dumb firaj and all those things. So I my college life was so wonderful that I said, so I approached my dad and I said, I want to do my master's. And in those days, if you got uh a first div, 60% in in your undergrad in economics, you could directly get into Delhi School of Economics, which was next door neighbor. And so I had said, Master's economics. My father, being a classical forgi, said that, I'm not gonna go to the hospital. Um at the same time, uh I met a gentleman who was in the hospitality industry. He was working for Roberoy Hotels, and was a very strong influence on me, both as a friend as uh somebody I just kind of you know admired. And I would tease him and say, uh, it was like Veter Banaya, Bavarchi Bannaya to hotel management karo. That was a perception in the in the 80s, right? Um and so I would keep teasing him about this till one day he told my dad. He says, you know, I challenged Dilip to get into the Obre School of Hotel Management. In those days, um they didn't come and do campus recruitment, they put out an ad in a newspaper all over India. I think on an average 10,000 people applied for it. You had to be a graduate. And they took between 15 and 20 uh management trainees every year. So it was hard to get into. So he challenged my dad and he said, Look, you tell him to give if he gets into the Obrey School, in fairness, you should allow him to do what he wants to do. Because I don't think he's gonna get in. And so it was more as a challenge, if you like, that I went and appeared for the uh interviews and the assessments of the Obrey School. Even in those days, you went through four rounds of interviews and group discussions and uh, you know, the form of psychometrics in those days. And uh in your last round, you got to meet the chairman. Uh and I got in. And once I got in, I went back to my dad, said, I've fulfilled what you'd asked me to do. Now can I go and study for another two years again? Good, classic, autocratic. Father said, What rubbish, what a fantastic opportunity this is, and you start working. And so that was my having said that. I think I took to the industry like a fish to water. From day one, I entered the portals of the Oberoy School, and I don't think I've ever felt as much as uh at home as I did in that environment. And so I knew I'd found my calling in the industry I wanted to work in and what I wanted to do. Um the next 33 years of my career have been spent in hospitality. Uh I worked across brands, Oberoy's, Taj, Intercontinental, and finally the last part of my career leading Starwood hotels and resorts in South Asia, before embarking on this second innings, as I call it, of becoming an educational entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. One thing that really strikes me in a positive way about the hospitality sector is that uh if I look at all the top chains in India today, and if you look at the leadership, most of them have spent decades and and they have uh risen up the ranks and become operators and CXOs. Whereas in other sectors, typically the leadership gets parachuted. So from top B schools, from investment bankers, private equity guys, whenever the sector started, you know, starts getting actually structured and larger once priority comes into play, once the company starts going public. Uh what is this let's say this unique DNA of hospitality that it actually gives the people who joined at a very very entry level a chance to grow up and you know lead organizations at this scale. Uh and why do you why do you think you guys have been able to still retain that DNA?

SPEAKER_01

So two parts to that. I think if somebody is able to survive the hospitality industry for the first five years of their career, well, it's a hard grind. All these things you hear about long working hours and uh underpaid, overworked, which has been the perception of this industry for a long time. Anyone who's lasted beyond five years has remained sticky to the industry. If you have to leave and move out of the industry, it happens in those early years. Once you put those hard yards, you want to see the benefits and reap the rewards. In my time, in the early years, it took you maybe 15 years to become a general manager of a hotel. From let's say starting as a management trainee as I did. Today you'll see general managers, eight years, nine years, ten years, it's getting younger and younger. But all these guys have lasted in the industry past, as I call it, that five-year threshold. To truly fall in love with the industry, uh, no matter how long, how hard you worked, all of that stuff, um, that's probably why you will find that you know leaders of the hospitality industry have grown from the industry itself. Having said that, it's not necessarily a good thing either. When you think about other sectors and you and as you said, how people are parachuted in, I think the lack of that having happened in our industry has also probably been a reason for us being such an insular industry. For some reason, we don't take people from outside our own industry, and for the longest, people from our industry didn't go out anywhere else. So hospitality was never mainstreamed. Um, so that works both as an advantage as well as a challenge. Uh, but I think the fact that this longevity of time spent in the industry to reach leadership gives leaders in hospitality, you know, so much more ownership of the business. We were part of it seeing it like how I feel myself. You know, I've seen this industry now over 40 years. I've seen some very systemic monumental shifts. Um, I've always seen us lag in many things we do. For example, you'll hear many people say in technology adaptation, Notellias always lag behind.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

To me, if we lag behind, when we do adapt, we are able to adapt to that much better than anybody else does. The other thing with hospitality and its leadership is that there isn't really any other sector where truly learning through your experience, what we today call the softer skills, empathy, uh, this ability to really work in gel with people. We are at the end of the day an entirely people-centric industry. Today, your people-centricity probably is what defines true leadership. And hospitality leaders have imbibed that through those years they've spent in the industry and probably are able to demonstrate those skills, I think.

SPEAKER_02

Uh Dilip, and of course, you have seen that phase that ever since we opened our markets to the globe in the early 90s, we have seen the story happening in a lot of sectors that there was explosive growth. Of course, uh opening our markets followed by the next three decades of consistent growth of the economy itself. It meant that sectors like the first wave of growth was driven by IT, and there also we saw this uh story unfurling that uh the industry grew faster than we could have, you know, added people to that industry. And we are seeing the same trends in all other uh industries now: healthcare, travel and hospitality, uh capacity addition in these sectors uh is much faster than the talent development pipeline. At what, and you were you were a hotelier, at what point of time did you realize uh or you could foresee uh this becoming a pain point and a critical enabler uh for the sector? And what gave you the confidence and the inspiration to uh let's say come on the other side of the table and uh do something to solve this problem?

SPEAKER_01

So I remember back in 2011 or 2012 when I started my role uh in Starwood, one of uh my oft-repeated quotes, which I'd quoted then, was that in our industry the battle for market share will be fought as much over the customer as it will be over talent. So now this is going back 12-13 years ago. And I think the prophecy is what you're seeing today, to your point about how um there's runaway growth in the industry uh and the challenge is no more about demand, the challenge is no more about capital. It is about capital, but it's about human capital. And actually, it was perhaps that recognition that early in time that sowed the first seeds of what I'm doing today. In Starwood, we used to, because our growth was so fast in those years, we used to recruit between 80 and 100 management trainees every year to fuel this growth. And we would go to all the IHMs, um, private hotels, schools to recruit. And I began to see a distinct trend where the quality of the graduate um was simply not fulfilling the needs of the industry. The IHM system, 50 years old, I think you made the point earlier that it was uh I think in a time warp.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh whether it was curriculum, whether it was faculty, um IHMs never needed to market themselves. You sat for a common entrance and depending on your merit ranking, you got into one, so everybody had students. Um and so I think that sense of complacency um was such that they didn't feel a need to do anything different or to change as the industry was changing. Whereas when we looked at it from the industry's perspective, uh we were looking for a very different breed of a young graduate to come into the industry. The need for skills, uh hardcore hard skills as you call them, that you should know, F and B, uh, front office may uh uh check in, check out, housekeeping make a say, coming south. Um I think today those skills are the easiest to learn. Like what any employer recruiter is looking for today are the software skills. They're looking at people who have empathy, passion, creativity, um, who can very easily pick up the technical skills required of a job. And you know, this goes back to my own learnings at the Obrei school when I started there. Uh and I've never forgotten that uh statement Mr. PRS Obrei made. He says, I didn't hire you for your skills, I hired you for your attitude. It's my job to train you for the skills. But there's no way I can train you for that attitude. You either have it or you don't. And interestingly, in those days, one of his uh biggest criteria for recruitment was if you came from an armed forces family, he says you naturally have values, discipline, upbringing, communication, you know, all those good things which make you who you are, your your your persona. He said, I can't teach that. But what is F and B? What is front office? What is running a hotel? That I can teach. So I'm looking for those kind of people. That stands true even today. And so when you think of what we do at ISH, to me, 50% of your learning happens in a classroom, but more than 50% of the learning here happens outside the classroom. Uh, in terms of how we are trying to develop students, to me, when I set out to build ISH Vivek, I took very seriously the Stephen Covey habit, begin with the end in mind. So to me, I first tried to envision what is the graduate profile I want out of this college, and work backwards from there to say now what kind of a curriculum to have, what kind of courses to offer, what kind of faculty to have, what kind of infrastructure to have. And at that time, in my vision, a graduate from ISH should be a socially responsible citizen and should have learnt skills which will last him a lifetime. We've not educated that student for his first job. We've delivered an education which will help him have a mindset to last him his entire life. Whether it is the approach to gender diversity, whether it's the approach to sustainability in the environment. I mean, at the end of the day, we've been responsible for leaving a much poorer world for this younger generation, at least in terms of the environment. You can't sit them in a class and teach them sustainability. They have to experience it. As an example, you walk around. Campus, you will not see any single-use plastic. Now that's a good thing to do in any case. But more importantly for us, after four years here, that student's mindset is imbibed with that fact that plastic is bad. Our diversity ratios, we have 55% female students in ISH. So for male and female students, studying in this environment which is so diverse gives them the respect for that diversity through their lives. I mean, I worry that the rationale for having a posh, for having these really targeted ESG initiatives. I mean, it's something which should come naturally to people. Not that there is a policy and a framework, so you have to do it. So that was my vision to create the graduate profile. And everything I've done in where ISH is today, it's a continuing journey for us. We are in our very early days. An education institution to build its legacy, to build the brand, to build the credibility takes a long time. You need a very strong alumni. But I think we started our journey well. And as you said, the opportunities are so tremendous going forward in the broader hospitality, travel, tourism, and many other allied sectors today where hospitality skills are what recruiters look for.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. So Dilip, that's so the thesis was that, and and what the school is today actually stands for is creating leaders of tomorrow for the hospitality and the service industry. Now, when you started actioning that uh thesis at an execution level in your early years, uh take us through that journey because before running ISH, of course, you were running hotels at scale, but that's a playbook which exists. But uh playbook creating hospitality leaders for India and the globe, that playbook did not exist, I would argue that. Of course, the the Harbinger until those days used to be the IHMs, which as we discussed, were not able to upgrade themselves to the demand of the time. So no playbook existed, there were no parallels here. How did you start uh let's say joining the pieces together? If you could take us through the early one, the first year of struggle that an entrepreneur goes through once you start uh bringing your vision into reality, that would be interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think uh the first thing I um publicly quoted when I was starting this is that the um real mission is to disrupt hospitality education. Uh as we discussed the ecosystem in which hotel management education was uh being done in India, it needed serious disruption. So, how do you disrupt such a traditional uh area of higher education? For 50 years, things have been done in one particular way. I think the first thing to accept was that we needed to reach global standards. So I was very clear I needed the right global partners to be a part of this journey that I'm starting off, to bring in global best practices. When we started, um our core faculty then, Nea was a part of it too, um, including me, we actually went and learned how to teach the Swiss way. And the philosophy there was their education is learner-centric, not teacher-centric. Whereas in India, classically in higher education, professor speaks, student listens, professor knows it all. Today, of course, Google Baba has replaced that professor.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01

Knowledge ki bathro you'll find it far more faster than on your phone than any professor can teach it to you. So the moment you start thinking learner-centric and move away from being teacher-centric, you're already disrupting the state of play as it was in India. When you are able to see how global institutions like our Swiss partners are able to influence their students, found jobs in sectors beyond hotels. Um, in the luxury industry, in the wellness industry, in the tech industry. Um, graduates from Swiss schools go and work all over the world in everything. I wanted to make sure that students studying here have those same opportunities. Move away from classical hotel management to a broader-based education with hospitality uh-centric, but going much beyond that. For example, we needed to make sure that there were a lot more business skills which were incorporated into the curriculum. Classically, in an IHM, you're you're studying for skills, food and beverage, front office, housekeeping, culinary skills.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

In our curriculums, you finish with that pretty much in year one. First year, indeed, we give you the foundation of what hospitality is. You go and study both practically and in theory about these core uh operating areas of hospitality. After one year, you go into a six-month internship. That internship is intended to apply those learnings of year one. By one and a half years, you're done with the hotels, hospitality part of it. After that, the program morphs into more of a BBA curriculum where you know all the business skills, strategy, marketing, finance, HR, uh, today, technology, AI, data, uh, which otherwise were never part of hotel management curriculums. So the next two and a half years are more focused on that. Now, what we found is that that approach allowed us to open up career opportunities beyond hotels to our students. In our first batch of graduates, I think less than 30% of them went to work directly in the hotel industry. Even those who wanted to work in the hotel industry didn't want to work in operations anymore. You know, that same perception, very long working hours and uh uh underpaid overwork. So maybe uh FB front office many janas. They wanted to do digital and revenue and sales, and but we had equipped them for the skills to be able to do that. Secondly, I think the real pivot in disrupting education was to make sure that they're developing transferable skills. Core hospitality education and the skills which come thereof in terms of just communication, uh, how you look, how you walk, how you talk, how you emote, how you relate, how you network. Uh these skills today are in demand for any employer, not just hotels, even a tech employer will want these skills. And so we're beginning to see the fruits of that disruption in the way we educate by just opening up a whole new set of opportunities for graduates of hospitality. Having said that, as you yourself said, seeing this rebound in our industry, we've never seen a cycle of growth like we're seeing right now. Right? You made the point, right? That we're adding more rooms in five years than we added in 50 years before that. Post-COVID, some of the systemic changes with the industry went through, where we had to get away from that reputation of being first to fire.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, we knew it was going to be a long haul and a struggle. But I think the reality is that hospitality employers have woken up to that fact. Today I can confidently say that almost all hotel brands and companies are paying more. There is pay parity with many other sectors outside of hospitality. They're trying to bring in better work-life balance. Many companies and brands are moving to, can you imagine, five-day weeks in hospitality, which is a 24 by seventh business. But but they're doing that. So the attractiveness of our industry is improving. And we want to leverage that to actually encourage our students. I love to tell our students, I said, you're not taking your first job to make your career in that forever. But it's a very good option to start your career in hospitality, build on those transferable skills, and you would be a preferred recruit for so many employers. A start of your career in hospitality will accelerate your career going forward. So I'm very conscious about the fact that this is my industry. I spent 33 wonderful years in it. Um, my intent always to give was to give back in some way that I can. And now to refresh that approach that our industry is a good, attractive career to go into. Uh we I make a bigger effort now to encourage students, start your career in hospitality, take it on from there. If you like this industry, you'll stay on. If you don't like it, you've still acquired those skills which will allow you to flourish in anything you do.

SPEAKER_02

So, Dineep, two very interesting insights are coming out of this point that you made. One is that you decided to move away, or let's say, not restrict your curriculum to just those list of skills that a typical hotel management institution would impart. And second, you also wanted the students to have a broader foundation so that their skills are transferable across sectors and not just limit their opportunities to one hotel industry. Uh but the the other side of the argument is, and and we run a vocational company which trains people in the hospitality space. So the other side of the argument is that it's very easy to codify hard skills in a curriculum. For example, let's say you just prepare a list of learning outcomes, a list of processes, list of things that you have to teach. But codifying empathy, passion, creativity becomes slightly more difficult because uh it's how do you uh how do you define, how do you impart, let's say, empathy? I mean, I can't think of any curriculum that a school has successfully been able to build. So your job becomes difficult because of the mission that you are chasing, which is not restricting yourself to a set of hard skills at other institutions. So when you thought what you are ultimately going to achieve, which was the model image of a uh let's say the graduate that you mentioned, uh which should be more socially responsible, more empathetic, uh passion creativity, how did you then work backwards and build the curriculum and codify it? Uh so that, and let's say once you scale, once there are more batches joining up, uh how and how do you tell your educators that the uh that how do your educators how would your educators and trainers make sure that uh these uh let's say softer skills are also getting imparted as a part of the overall experience that is ISH?

SPEAKER_01

So, firstly, let me say that I don't think you can or should codify this to use your own uh uh language. Uh uh to really highlight that point, what I'm trying to say is that we've built so much of flexibility in our curriculums that pretty much every semester the faculty is encouraged to see what needs to be changed or upgraded based on what's happening in real time in the industry.

SPEAKER_04

Got it.

SPEAKER_01

So if you're teaching a case about, let's say, uh a great customer service experience uh uh in one semester, because of our industry network connect, our students going and interning there, working there, most of our faculty coming from the industry, we keep hearing uh anecdotally from so many of our industry colleagues on what's changing, what's happening there, and we always try and adapt those changes uh into how we impart. So it's not a rigid curriculum, it's not rigid. So it can't be codified to uh uh uh you know belabor the point you were making. Having said that, today I think even trainers, uh uh educators, uh, when you think about empathy or emotional intelligence, right, to critical uh um soft skills or life skills which we focus on. Today, the way you can do that, for example, we encourage students to do a lot of self-assessment. Uh, when we bring in batches to do, let's say, our executive education business, even our postgrad students, you would make them go through, let's say, an MBTI, let them understand their own personas first. Half the time when you ask a young student, it's difficult for them to uh be able to ascribe what kind of this introvert, extrovert, um uh uh all of that. So a lot of that is incorporated into the curriculums. Help you understand yourself first. Once you've understood yourself, you yourself know key now what are the gaps which I need to fill up, right? So when you are uh doing this uh, you know, let's say an MBTI program uh on a certain cohort of students, the outcome of that is once each one of them uh we help them understand who they are, we're able to identify okay, uh, you're not very good as a team player. So what skills do you need to work on to be able to do that? We have a unique position here uh and a department here called the Center for Life Skills. It's headed and run by a highly qualified uh uh lady. And as the name suggests, that center individualizes learning of these life skills by student. Each student enrolled in ISH will first have a what we call an IDP, an individual development plan made for that student with the student's inputs itself. Pretty much on day one. At the end of every semester, that IDP is reviewed with the student. What gaps have been filled, what still needs to be done, what's changed. Young people, I can tell you, every six months they'll change what they want to do in life, and that's a good thing. I always encourage kids to tell them it's good to be confused. Don't think beyond the next five years. There are jobs and businesses in five years which don't even exist today. We want to prepare you for those jobs and skills which don't exist today. When you think about the impact of technology and AI in particular, as everybody loves to talk about, the differentiator in the future, nobody can take away that human edge connect. Uh AI can't do that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So that human interface and the skills required to make you uniquely uh different in order to do that is what I think we're trying to inculcate in our students. There's no going away from that tech. AI is here to stay. It'll begin to impact more and more and more of everything that happens in our world. Professionally, business-wise, personally, everything. What can never go away is the need for that human connection. Okay, people will never remember what you said, and people will never remember what you did. People will remember how you made them feel. I want to educate my students to always make people feel happy. Look at the irony of our own industry. I often ask myself, I said, you worked in an industry where your core of your job was to make other people happy. That's what a hotelier does, right? You want to make your guest happy. What greater fulfillment than to do something which just because it's a part of your job, but it's making other people happy. And I think that's how I hope to continue to um inspire young people about what a great career choice working in the hospitality industry is.

SPEAKER_02

Very interesting. I would like to double-click on another point, Jalip, as your your first boss, the point that he mentioned that uh attitude to naiji as an industry manikali. Uh there are some things that can be taught, but uh there are some things that can't be taught. So uh who do you select at ISH and who do you reject? Um, and and by the way, I I went to a business school and uh my my dean there at the Indian School of Business and Hyderabad, he also made a similar statement that it's not about who do we, the school is not what it is because of who do we select. It is because or what do we teach? It's because of who do we reject. He said that the same curriculum is also being taught in let's say 10 other uh colleges. But it's about our uh it's about also about our selection process. Okay, ingredients. We are more of a finishing and polishing school, like raw material. Uh, certain ingredients. So, what's your secret sauce? Who makes it to ISH?

SPEAKER_01

So, uh really interesting question because this was again one of my mantras of disruption, which I talked about earlier. So, we were very clear from the start that your 12th standard board results will have no impact on your admission.

SPEAKER_02

Grades, as in.

SPEAKER_01

Uh your grades.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Like if you want to get into any college in Delhi University, 95% say come to Matabati Matkaro. So we were very clear. You need a high school diploma, so you have to finish 12th standard. Whether you got 60% or 90% is not going to be a factor in your admission. Again, my own experience from 40 years ago entering the Oberi school and the rigor I went through to get in and selected, we applied much of that approach, right? So there is a very rigorous process of interviewing you go through here. You do psychometric testing to understand for us to understand what is your personality like.

SPEAKER_02

That's a part of the application process. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Part of the selection process.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, at the end of the day, even if the student has the propensity to pay for this education, we have to be very honest with the student to say, you know what, I don't think you're going to enjoy studying here or working in the hospitality sector. Your persona doesn't suggest that it is. So that may be a criteria for rejection. What we look for is again attitude. Uh, in that attitude, we are able to realize what kind of potential the student has, what passions they have, uh, uh where left brain, right brain, right brain, creativity, all of those are the type of kind of things we try to assess. Because it's very important for us to say the student must fit the education we provide, and our education must be relevant to that student. Sure. Right? So that forms the basis. The interviewing process, group discussions, um, you know, in the end of the day, your confidence, your personality as we see it. Um, it plays a big role in being successful in the industry. Where we find that some aspects may lack, that goes into that IDP I talked about. This has to be built up. I recollect a student we'd taken, I think our second batch suffered from serious depression. And parents said, Look, really good student, good marks, all that. Uh, really has a passion in colorly art. She used to love to cook, bake, and all those kind of things. But she was clinically depressed. Logic suggested, I mean, I'm not a mental health institution, what am I going to do? Um, but somewhere the the faculty team said, you know, we want to take a risk on this student. I tell you, after the first semester, I I cannot even imagine the change and transformation in that uh student. She became the head of our creative society, she was the most active in terms of any activities, extracurricular. Uh today I think she I think she just moved jobs. She she works in a great sector, in a great job. And you know the fulfilling thing was when the parent came to me and said it was simply you you know when you take risks, you take risk on people. I could take risk on somebody else's capital, but I wouldn't really take a risk on people. I knew that we could do something through the kind of education we impart to help this young lady in her journey. And to me, that is most fulfilling. At the other extreme, we had another student who came from a very wealthy hotel-owning family, but brought up in the Chhatracha of three elder sisters, very conservative parents. And he didn't even know how to tie a tie. Father was hotelier though. So, that's what his IDP was. Smarting this kid up, he's got all the other things going for him. And after six months, his father came to see me. And first, jokingly but aggressively, he said, So I took a step back. I said, What have we done? He said, So I said, Wasn't that what you wanted us to do? Smarten this kid up. So I think you know, when you individualize, why why I never want ISS to become an amity or a biases or any big, I never ventured into this business even in with my entrepreneurial ambitions to scale it to those levels. For me, it is the ability to personalize education. Big universities have commoditized education. Our own industry, I think it's this personalization of education which is really allowing us to produce graduates who we know will go on to become leaders.

SPEAKER_02

Very interesting. We have observed in sectors that wherever whichever sector is facing a talent gap, you also face a crunch of good trainers. So, of course, one part in your industry is selecting the right candidate and taking them through the right pedagogy or right experiences, which builds a solid foundation. But because it is so personalized, getting the right people, the right instructors, the right mentors, the right educators also becomes uh important, more so not only because of their technical expertise, but also for their ability to, let's say, inspire students. Uh how do you uh handle that? Who do you select as uh let's say to be an instructor at ISH?

SPEAKER_01

So I would say that was the third pillar of disruption. But I was very clear that faculty who work at ISH will be paid on par with our industry. So if you've come with 10 years of experience in the industry, whatever that 10 years of experience where you would have been and what you would have earned there, you'll get paid that here. So we wanted to move away from this, and it's even today teacher, it's it's it's it's not a respected profession. Think of the West, where professors and academics are revered and respected. There is there is very easy, seamless flow between academia, industry, uh, research. You keep coming and going out of it, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you're right. Uh in other hurdle management institutes, generally hospitality karpate.

SPEAKER_01

Well, they finished their uh bachelor's, it's not correct, correct, correct. Never worked a day in the industry. Yeah. Have no idea of what's happening, how monumental the changes are, how fast and rapid uh the changes are. So for me, what was important is to harmonize and blend academia and industry. I do need kick-ash PhDs, and I do need really kick-ash industry practitioners. The idea is how do you bring them together and they're able to work tag teaming each other. So there is discipline and rigor of academics which needs to be there in any higher education institution, and then there has to be a true understanding of what's happening in the industry. So our faculty is a mix of both. And the people who come from the industry, actually they come work with us for a while and go back to the industry, which was originally what I wanted to do: that there should be a seamless movement. Because I made it a mission to pay them as well as they'd work in the industry. I was able to attract a lot of very good people. And many of those people come and literally found their vocation in academics. Uh, and and you do need to have a passion to transfer your knowledge and learning to others. Nea was a good example of that as well, bringing somebody from the industry into academia, go back into uh industry again. So, really, that's the uh you know code you have to crack, that you have to be able to pay on par with industry. If you pay what teachers earn, I wouldn't get the quality of faculty that I have today. So I think it's very, very important, and this is something all academic institutions need to learn, that you have to pay on par with the industry to get solid people. And most of our people who come from industry and then who take a liking for academia, many of them now are pursuing PhDs. Um they don't have a master's, they're pursuing a master's and then they'll go and do it. But now they are beginning to learn, they've brought the industry expertise and they want to understand academia better. Uh, because I don't take away the fact that academic discipline is very critical in higher education.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But equally experience uh from the industry. So you have to bring them both together and harmonize them.

SPEAKER_04

You just need to have a good mix. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh Dilip, we have seen that a lot of time good ideas, good initiatives don't work because timing is not right. So you also have to wait for the time for a good idea to arrive. When you were building an ISH or as you are scaling ISH now, what are the changes in the talent landscape, in the hospitality and the service industry in general? Uh, that you think enables the time for this idea to fly right now? Why now?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think we we we discussed this point earlier. The never has our industry seen a cycle of growth as we see, right? So that in in itself is a strong attractor from an industry perspective. Um I think today and post-COVID, this is um one of those systemic changes I talk about where the need to travel is now a necessity. It's no more a luxury. Twenty years ago, the internet was moving from being a luxury to becoming a necessity. Yeah, I think the need and urge for people to travel is undergoing that today. Where because of this um and and it's come, I've experienced it myself being locked in in COVID, that desperation to get out and travel, short all holidays. Today, instead of in the classic days when I grew up, one month in a year was vacation when with family you went to uncle, auntie, grandparents' place, that was holiday. Today I would I myself take maybe 10 holidays a year. Four-day, five-day holidays, three-day holidays. More and more people are doing that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right? So that need for travel has spawned whole different verticals in our business, if you see. The concept of homestay and vacation rentals. Yeah. Pre-COVID, nobody ever talked about.

SPEAKER_02

Nobody was talked about, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Today, that alternate accommodation category is a serious competitor to the traditional hospitality industry. It spawned a whole generation of entrepreneurs. That kind of uh category is spawning many supplier industries to it. Today people want to explore your own country, today the infrastructure of roads, of airport connectivity, airlines, flight capacity, all of those are suggesting. And why is it that after COVID, the inbound tourism into India dropped down significantly and has never come back to those numbers? Yet, how are industries continuing to grow?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because the domestic market is so big and so strong, you don't need that inbound market. From days where corporate business hotels did 80% foreign occupancy, 20% Indian occupancy, it's reversed. Reversed, yeah. Right? So with such a large demand there, just sitting, the explosion and growth of the industry is inevitable.

SPEAKER_02

The perception also that Indian travelers do not spend, that hoteliers used to have uh totally gone. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I can tell you now, Goa is a good example. Yeah. You ask any hotelier there, the Indian guest on an average spends at least 20% more than the same foreign guest in that hotel. Whether it's on FB, whether it's on spa, whether it's on other experiences, which also brings me to the point that no other industry or sector is as suited to deliver what's called the experience. God are the days when you went to a hotel for just a great product or great food. Today, guests are looking for a much more holistic experience, right? Because of the way they are trained, the ability to deliver those experiences. I mean, how much how much of a better experience can you give somebody selling a phone or somebody selling a car? But in hospitality, those moments of truth between guests and employees in hotels are so many that you can be delivering an experience in every moment of that truth when you're engaging with a customer. He's dining near a restaurant, he's checking in, he's using the spa. In every which way there is that opportunity. And that's what the travelers are looking for today.

SPEAKER_02

I wanted to understand that what does the industry need to do? Uh, and what do these skilling and education players need to do in order to cover the lost grounds in terms of building a talent pipeline? The candidates don't want to come to this industry, people are saying drop in their enrollments. What is to be done on the part of the education players and what is to be done on the part of the employers to make sure that people start looking at this industry as an attractive, as a respectable option?

SPEAKER_01

So I think uh first thing I'll say is that globally uh trends suggest that there's always a lag between when an industry rebounds and when it becomes attractive for talent. Okay, right? So we are probably right now, hopefully at the end of that lag phase where, as we have agreed, uh the industry's growth is now pretty much there. It's very uh uh evident, all data, all results, everything points towards that. And I think that lag of now the desire for younger people to come and work in the industry and therefore get an education in the industry, uh, that's gonna also change, right? So, yes, indeed, it's concerning that the number of students sitting for the common entrance exam uh for the NHMCT has dropped drastically uh from 2019, let's say, till today. Uh, but I'm very optimistic that that trend is reversing. Uh, and and I think I'd go by global data, which says that there is a lag. Our European partner schools have the same problem. Um, but we've obviously cushioned ourselves because of the opportunities for careers beyond hotels. So I think that's what I would encourage many other hospitality education players to be doing is to, you know, look at hotels as one part of the entire ecosystem.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And then that can only happen if you uh keep your training more broad-based and not just limited to the needs of one uh industry.

SPEAKER_01

That's one. And I'll just make one more point on that. When you say what needs to be done, the industry-academia interface that needs significant improvement. Right? There is a much larger role for the industry to play in helping uh academia and hospitality education uh uh improve. The other thing is that perception we talked about the industry being uh underpaid, overworked, all those the old historical perceptions which have traditionally been there. I'm always reminded of this whole campaign which you saw, mutual fund CIA. So, what happened there? The mutual fund industry came together and created a campaign for the mutual fund product. It wasn't BIDLA or ICICI or HDFC individually advertising their mutual funds. The industry was educating people to invest in mutual funds. Now, if I use that analogy for our industry, what we perhaps need is for all the big players of the hospitality industry. You know, they're all doing great things individually.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You take the example, whether it's IHCL, whether it's Marriott, whether it's Obre, they're all doing some great things. They're making significant improvements to this whole work-life balance, better salaries. But individually, that's not changing the perception which is there in the broader market, with school counselors, as I told you earlier. Or with young students saying, you know, what are the options by studying this? So if we were to have campaigns which amplified the charm and the attractiveness of a career in this industry, it is. I mean, the opportunities to go and work globally, the opportunities to be in this people-centric business where in the future, in an age of AI and technology, how that human touch will be the one which makes the difference. If we were to able to build messaging around that and propagate that to a broader audience, I think that will definitely help improve this lag of young people coming to study hospitality.

SPEAKER_02

Philippa, one very interesting thing that I have seen about hospitality is that a lot of people go out and pursue entrepreneurship in their own ways. People start their own boutique hotels, they start their restaurants. Uh now, as a part of ISH curriculum, how do you inspire people, or let's say curriculum is a rigid word, as a part of the overall experience that is ISH, how do you inspire people to take up those entrepreneurial roles as well and become job creators rather than just job seekers coming out of a school?

SPEAKER_01

So I think in the three batches we graduated, each batch we've had three to four students who straight off jumped into entrepreneurship. We have our alumni who now run restaurants, who run cloud kitchens, who are making their own um craft products, uh AlcoBev products. Uh so entrepreneurship is very much a part of the curriculum. It's very much a part of like we have an incubator there where very pretty much every week, second week, we always invite some entrepreneur here. They don't have to be uh, you know, uh big-time well-known guys such as yourself, but we have many of them who've um done some pretty interesting things in the space. And you know, in the in the area of food, my god, the innovation happening is unbelievable. So we have these two students. So you know sliced cheese, right? Everybody's familiar. Yeah. Cheese ka slice sandwich maybe have you thought of a chocolate slice?

SPEAKER_02

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Never you think of a bar of chocolate, or you think of a but you never thought of chocolate as a slice, like the cheese as a slice? This chocolate also comes as a slice. It's very popular in Japan. So one of our students uh went to Japan and saw this. And he came back and he said, Mujibiye banana happened. And another he took on a partner, another student, a classmate of his, and they came uh to me and said, We want some gyan advice. I called them home, both my son Prahad and I. Um, and they took us through this plan. I thought it was the most brilliant plan. You need you need that one uh kicker of an idea, right?

SPEAKER_02

I can only imagine my daughter is going to have a six-year-old daughter, she's gonna love it. I mean, for a breakfast.

SPEAKER_01

So sliced cheese, sliced. So this the concept originates from Nutella. I mean, Nutella is something you put as a paste, right? Now imagine a sliced chocolate. So we have we have two of our students who set up the startup enterprise where they are uh making sliced chocolate. Um we have students who've opened restaurants in Goa. Uh, we've got students who opened uh here in Gorgao, Galeria Market. Um what's the name of that shop? It's a sandwich shop. It's a small little sandwich shop. You'll always find a queue there. Two of our graduates who've set that up. So indeed, entrepreneurship is an avenue which, you know, when they start, you know, Shirukumito IDB Bantana.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Almost 60-70% of them said entrepreneur one. Many of them don't even know how to spell the word entrepreneur properly, but entrepreneur one. And through the course and curriculum, through the experiences with the industry, through many of them, by the way, the set we have two internships in a four-year program. The first internship, we more or less mandate that they should all go and work in hotels and all work in large, big format, upper-up scale luxury hotels so that the experience is consistent. And we uh have uh uh industry partners as those hotels and brands who make sure that they also um add to the learning of the students. You know, the days when I went to intern, or maybe even when Neha may have gone to intern, intern was seen as casual labor for the hotel. Yeah, replacing a full-time job for rage arbitrage, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and clearly, half the reason why people didn't want to join the hotel industry was because of those terrible internship experiences. So we were very clear and we leveraged our industry connect to tell hotels we'll only send our students to you if you follow an internship curriculum. You've got to give that student time, you've got to give them an environment where they feel good about working in that industry. So today we work with a set of brands and hotels where there is a commitment on the hotel and the brand's part as well.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That we will make sure uh that you know we provide learning in the um uh so the second internship, uh which is in their fourth year, that is the time when many of them want to go and work for young startup companies. They even don't mind going and working for a mom and pop shop. To the extent we have students who say, you know, sir, between Oberoy hotels and postcard hotels, I want to work in postcard. Why? It's smaller, I learn everything. Here I'll be one small cog in a very big wheel. Yeah, whereas if I work in a smaller startup, see the change in mentality. In my time, you wanted to work for that biggest brand. Today the student says I want to work for a brand or a company or in an environment where I have the opportunity to learn, to grow, to be a part of so much more than e knockri pelaggya, e kam karraume, or usemira linear career path panel. Right? So those kind of changes. Which is largely this Gen Z demographic. I think that uh is a significant reason why more and more of them want to pursue entrepreneurial career. My own advice to them is always that you know what? First start working.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You know, do a couple of yards in the trenches, get your feet wet. Uh, it'll only give you a better appreciation of what the rigors and challenges are.

SPEAKER_02

Odds of succeeding when you actually do your entrepreneurship. Yeah, yeah. Great advice. Dilip, you also spoke very passionately on the uh subject of diversity. And uh in that context, actually, it would be worth talking about the stereotypes that uh exist in the uh hospitality sector, especially in the client-focused role. Uh so the belief that only a people from a certain background, certain skin shade will work, etc. As a as a hotel management or as a let's say as an institution, how are you trying to address those uh uh stereotypes uh in in your institutions and eventually uh a lot of your candidates are going or going to become you know leaders of tomorrow for the service industry in general and the hospitality industry as well. So, how are you making them ready so that uh eventually and gradually uh the industry goes away from these stereotypes?

SPEAKER_01

I think I made this point earlier that in that graduate profile I was seeking that you know what do I want. So, you also maintain a diversity in your uh student uh cohorts? As I said, we have 55% female students, number one. Each year in every batch, we have students with learning disabilities. We have trans students studying here as well. The idea is not to demonstrate diversity just by doing that. Yeah, in fact, that student with a disability or uh a student from a particular community is not the problem. It's the normal students around them who have to be educated. So today the focus is male students understanding that gender diversity and female students, it's no more about oh, if I hold the door open for you, I'm being a gentleman and because you're a lady. Or if you're carrying something heavy, I should help you carry it because you're a lady. In fact, I think in our kitchens, if a female student is carrying a heavy weight, the male student is not go and helper. The female student is encouraged to say, if you need my help, ask me. Today, a lot of females saying, Did I tell you to open the door for me? Yeah, right? So it's a little counterintuitive, but it's a way of imbibing the respect for diversity in their education itself. So that when they are graduates, when I talked about socially responsible citizens, all these mindsets are imbibed in them from the start, or kabini bullying is in the game. I think that's the way you have to embed and instill these kinds of mindsets. So one is knowledge, one is skills, and one is mindsets. To me, it is with what mindset have I equipped these graduates of mine in pursuing their journey towards leadership, towards entrepreneurship, towards whatever they want to do.

SPEAKER_02

Philippa smaller nations like Philippines and Thailand have in a way become the de facto exporter of talent in this industry and hospitality and allied industry to the world. Actually, because uh we talked in the beginning that we are a nation of 140 crore people uh with the demographic dividend. Uh, with the right also education system. I think uh our education system is still more developed than these uh uh let's say smaller geographies. I think where did we go wrong?

SPEAKER_01

Firstly, let me clarify. I don't think uh Thailand is an exporter of talent. Thailand is an importer of talent. I mean, look at the number of Indians who work in hotels in Thailand. Uh so it will be a net importer. It's a net importer. Thailand is great as a destination to attract tourists. Philippines, I can accept uh in certain specific uh uh um industries, shipping, uh the the Filipinos are uh always found on ships. Yeah uh you'll find a lot of Filipinos in the Middle East. Um but I think today, more and more, India is exporting a larger and larger number of people in global positions. When you look at the big brands, and I can give you an example of Marriott, Marriott is one of the greatest exporters of Indian talent internationally. They've got hotels all over the world, right? Um, some of the finest general managers of their hotels in so many parts of the world are Indian. So India has always been uh known to develop good talent. The opportunities for that talent to go and work internationally really began when the big brands came into India. In my growing up years, there was Oberoy Taj ITC, right? There were three IT DC, they took a bad anekamokata. Obroy hotels had a few hotels in the Middle East and Egypt and all that, so some of our managers did go, but by and large they didn't. But once the international brand started coming here and once they were established here, and once globally they were able to see the quality of talent available in India, they started developing specific programs and career paths for their managers to aspire to go and work internationally.

SPEAKER_02

How does your uh global partnership uh as you talked about when you were conceptualizing uh the school? Uh a key idea in your mind was bringing international standards to hospitality education in India, and in that respect, you also ended up uh partnering with some of the best institutions across the world. So, how do those partnerships open pathways for your graduates, uh, especially for them who are looking at, let's say, career opportunities outside the country?

SPEAKER_01

So, in two ways. One is that um our partnerships uh and our brand agreements uh both with LaRoche and with the Call to Cash, who are our two uh global partners, one for culinary education, one for hospitality. So the pathways allow students to start their education here. A student, for example, who's doing a BBA in hospitality education, will be able to do one and a half years in India, that first year, which is operational, the six-month internship, and with full credits of that one and a half years, he can transfer to finish in Switzerland or in Spain, where are the two main LaRoche campuses. In that finishing there, he goes to an internship which is done somewhere in Europe itself. The moment he is then armed with that international degree, his mobility becomes much stronger. He's very attractive to employees in the Middle East, for example. Right? Our culminary students they finish three years here, they get an Indian degree, and they go and finish their fourth year in Paris at Ecole Ducasse. They get lapped up by employees anywhere in the world. Right? So the pathways through these partnerships allow our students to get internationally mobile. Even students who finish their education in India, uh in the both hospitality and country side, big companies like Marriott's a good example, Hype's a good example, they are recruiting Indians in the Middle East for their hotels. You know, Indians form 30% of the workforce of the hospitality industry in the Middle East at all levels, blue collar, white collar, every level. So our students are allowed to participate in the recruitment programs of the same brands in India, in the Middle East as well. I specifically talk more about the Middle East because you must appreciate that the biggest challenge or barrier to Indians going to work abroad are visa restrictions.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_01

You can't get a work visa in in Europe or in the US. Middle East is a country which encourages that. Some countries in Southeast Asia do as well. So we try and keep focused there. Once you've been able to go and work there and you've got that international experience, then you can go and work anywhere in the world. Sure.

SPEAKER_02

What do you want to leave behind as a legacy with respect to ISH? Uh, let's say in a few decades when you hang your boots.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, it's not going to take a few decades to hang my boots. I'm getting ready to hang my boots as soon as I can. Uh and and and in saying that, let me say that hanging my boots means not running a business or an enterprise anymore. Uh I'm passionate about uh uh you know sharing my knowledge and learning with others, so uh I will continue to want to do that. Um I'm a very keen golfer, I want more time to play golf as well. Uh but you know I did when I was starting off have the same vision in mind. I think if ISH as an institution is remembered and known in the future for genuinely disrupting and transforming hospitality education, I'd love to see our IHMs become truly global institutions as well. Uh I think India desperately needs more higher education institutions which which which which actually adopt global standards, deliver global quality of learning. Uh and I think in the future, if people are able to say that ISH was a big part about that transformation, about globalizing our education, about truly lifting the standards of higher education in India, of bringing far more respect for academia in India. I think that's sufficient for me as a legacy. Uh I don't think it bothers me how big I become or how much of money this makes, but that is a legacy which is more important.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, great. Uh Dilip, that brings us to the end of the podcast. And uh I must say that I've met very few people who have done phenomenally well in two different different roles. You had been a hotel air for decades, very successful one. That was your identity, and then you pivot pivoted as a person in uh as in the role of a founder of an educational institution. So hats off to that.

SPEAKER_01

Uh can I just uh uh give you an analogy on that as well? Uh I'm a big fan of uh cricket, as I'm sure you are, and many most of us are. So when you think of a test match, yeah, first innings major century banata is a good batsman. Yeah. So second innings may century banana, team coach.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01

Virat Kohli is a great example of that, but I'm just saying, so I looked at my hospitality career as the first innings of my life. I may have scored a century, I did reasonably well, um uh achieved some amount of success. But it is in the second innings, if I score a century, I can truly say I'm a winner. On that, I think the jury is very much out. I've probably reached 30-40 runs so far, the Karam batting. But the one who's able to score a century in the second innings is the one who makes his team win. And that's the way I look at the two innings of my career as well.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, wow. We wish you a double century in the in this uh second inning, Dilip. And uh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm sure uh viewers watching the show must be as inspired as I am from this conversation. Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for having me.