Digital garden - my thoughts on writing & stillness.

In 1991 a Chennai based conglomerate opened its first hotel on the Coromandel Coast of Tamil Nadu. Three decades later MGM Muthu Hotels operates more than 50 properties across Portugal, Spain, France, Cuba, Kenya, Scotland, England, and India. This is the story of how that happened.

In 1963 a man with no formal education and very little money started a transport business in Chennai with a single truck. Six decades later that business has grown into one of South India's most diversified and enduring conglomerates. This is the story of how MGM Group of Companies built an empire.

For too long, Indian luxury hospitality was a conversation that happened only in a handful of major cities. Deeksha Suri looked at the India that existed beyond those cities and decided that it deserved something better. What followed changed the meaning of luxury hospitality for millions of people who had never been part of that conversation before.

India is one of the most culturally rich civilisations on earth. For decades, the luxury hospitality industry treated that richness as a backdrop. The LaLiT Hotels made it the centrepiece and in doing so changed the entire conversation about what Indian luxury could and should mean.

In a hospitality landscape long dominated by international names and foreign luxury brands, one Indian company quietly built something that needed no foreign validation to stand apart. That company is Bharat Hotels and the brand it created is The LaLiT.

Somewhere in the flood of baby gear recommendations that arrives once you are expecting, the baby monitor tends to show up as an assumed essential, something every list says you need, without much explanation of why, or which kind, or whether your specific home and routine actually call for one.