Manav Thadani

Founder-Chairman,
Hotelivate

Serial entrepreneur, trusted advisor, restaurateur, phillumenist and a passionate hotelier, Manav Thadani is the Founder-Chairman of Hotelivate, a new-age, innovative and curated consulting firm spread across South-East Asia and now Middle East. He runs various conferences in the Asia Pacific region, namely, Hotel Investment Conference – South Asia (HICSA); Tourism and Hotel Investment & Networking Conference (THINC) Indonesia.
Having previously served as the Chairman for HVS in the APAC region, he brought HVS to India in 1997 and led its businesses across the region for 20 years. Thadani also forayed into the world of hotel ownership on behalf of foreign institutional capital a few years ago. SAMHI is India’s hotel investment and development firm with focus on ownership of branded hotels in the mid-scale and economy segments across key cities. Since 2010, SAMHI has accumulated a pipeline of over 4,800 rooms across 31 hotels in 14 Indian cities under international brands like Marriott, Hyatt and Inter-continental Hotel Group, and has been recently listed on the Indian Stock Exchange.
Most recently, Thadani has set his eyes in the restaurant space and has opened his first passion of love – a restaurant called INJA, a marriage between Indian and Japanese
cuisine and followed it up with a second Italian restaurant called Camelio’s in New Delhi.

Success Mantras:
“My favorite mantra that I have believed in always is to be a team player. Early on in my career, I realized I had entrepreneurial spirits and in order to succeed, I needed to surround myself with smart people who share similar philosophy of work ethics. I loved spending time with young associates and teaching, learning and sharing knowledge with them. Perhaps this is why so many of them today have been so successful in other careers as well even after leaving my immediate tutelage. As an entrepreneur, I have many businesses and all of them have very capable leaders in their own right. You have to believe in them (the teams), trust them and most importantly forgive them – so that they can learn from any mistakes. In fact, many times I have found that they were actually correct and it was I who perhaps should have changed my thought process. In a nutshell, it’s all about actively listening, respecting diverse perspectives, and contributing your unique strengths to the collective effort. Therefore for me, it’s always been about the team.”