Power List 2017, Amit Bhosale, MD, ABIL Group

Amit Bhosale, the young and dynamic MD of ABIL Group, has been on a roll. Since the company’s first acquisition of Sun-n-Sand Hotel, Pune, Bhosale has not only given the company new direction and taken forward the real estate legacy into hospitality. Associating with international brands like W with W Goa, The St. Regis in Mumbai – both brands making their first foray into the Indian market – the Westin hotel in Pune and Le Meridien in Nagpur, today he has some of the biggest brand names under his umbrella. This year in particular is an exciting one for Bhosale. It began with W Goa throwing open its doors and now, there is yet another reason to celebrate as The St. Regis Mumbai is all set to complete two years of full operations this month (i.e. September), comfortably achieving target.
Bhosale’s vision is to create unique developments in prime locations and expand in the premium hospitality business. But that’s not all. An avid traveller, he also enjoys experimenting with different restaurants and cuisines from diverse cultures, helping him bring interesting concepts like Yuuka at The St. Regis Mumbai, Spice Market New York in W Resorts and Spa, Goa to India. Of course, his ride has not been without bumps. Along the way, Bhosale has learned some hard lessons like the opening of Le Méridien Nagpur where, like everybody else he too thought tier-II cities, were expanding but that was not the case. He realised that in these areas only land cost is cheaper but development cost is similar to tier-I cities and, coupled with that, the spending power is much smaller and they lack good air connectivity. Hence, he has steered clear of B-class towns since.
Like all smart businessmen, Bhosale too takes risks but only calculated ones. His decision to open properties mostly in locations which were relatively less crowded, for one. Take Westin Pune Koregaon Park, for example. When that opened, Pune had only three five-star hotels. Then when he opened Shangri-La, which later became Palladium and is now The St. Regis Mumbai, there was only the Four Seasons and ITC Grand Central in that market. Same for W Goa in Vagator Beach; there is no other five-star luxury resort in that part of North Goa other than Taj Holiday Village. And yes, it was the same case with Le Méridien Nagpur, where things didn’t quite work out the way he wanted it to. Bhosale now sees a lot of potential in the resort market and is betting beg on Sindhudurg, which was carved out of the erstwhile Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra.
To his credit, the young man is not afraid to venture out of his comfort zone and try his hand at something new – like running a hotel himself. “When we got into hotels, we were not hoteliers but we learned along way,” he says recounting the one year when he, along with the Ruia family, took over the reins of operating the mammoth property themselves under the Palladium brand name after dropping Shangri-La. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” he says. “We can’t tell you the kind of cold feet we had, but we did bite the bullet.”
Now, after having run and then successfully handed over the property to The St. Regis, he is breathing a sigh of relief. Ask him if would like to operate a hotel again, and pat comes his reply, “That is not something I want to get into,” he says. “Besides, if I decided to get hands on with hotel operations, I wouldn’t be able to build more hotels.”
So, Bhosale is back to doing what he does best i.e. building hotels. Having acquired land in Navi Mumbai and Maldives, he is planning to start building there while, at the same time, eyeing opportunities in Delhi and Bengaluru, where he sees great future. Simple, down-to-earth and extremely focused he may be but the quality, I feel, that is most endearing about Bhosale is this: he thinks with his head but he nevers forget to listen to his heart.
By Shafquat Ali