Graviss Hospitality is a 64-year-old Indian hotelier whose story rests on a single, irreplaceable asset: a luxury boutique hotel on Mumbai’s Marine Drive, operated under the InterContinental flag. Built by a family with generations of hospitality experience, the company has layered a constellation of small catering, restaurant and land-holding subsidiaries around that flagship, but the hotel remains the gravitational centre of the business. The recurring approach is to own or manage premium hospitality real estate and then extract value from every square foot - through rooms, food, events, and, where plans change, the land itself.
Business segments
Two engines at different stages - a luxury city hotel that generates the core income, and a collection of smaller ventures in restaurants, catering and land that extend the hospitality footprint or monetise its assets.
1. The InterContinental, Marine Drive: the flagship that carries the house
A single premium hotel on Mumbai’s most famous seafront earns its keep from rooms, food and events, with foreign guests providing a significant and growing share of the till.
- Earns per room, per meal, per event - the hotel’s revenue model is transaction-based, collecting per-night room charges, per-meal food and beverage sales, and fees for hosting events and banquets. There is no manufacturing; all raw materials and stores consumed are sourced indigenously.
- A franchise, not a brand of its own - the property runs under a franchise agreement with InterContinental, for which it paid franchise fees of Rs. 54 lacs in FY21, giving it access to a global reservation system and brand recognition without building a chain from scratch.
- Foreign guests are a material tailwind - foreign exchange earnings from international travellers reached Rs. 2,522.30 lacs in FY25, up from just Rs. 9.23 lacs in the pandemic-hit FY21, reflecting both the recovery of global travel and the hotel’s appeal to overseas visitors. India’s foreign tourist arrivals hit roughly 10.2 million in 2024, a 10% rise over the prior year, expanding the pool the hotel draws from.
- A lean team on a prime patch - the hotel employed about 159 people as of March 2025, a compact workforce for a full-service luxury property, while its Marine Drive address remains a competitive advantage that cannot be replicated.
2. The subsidiary portfolio: restaurants, catering and land as optionality
A set of wholly-owned subsidiaries extends the group into restaurant operations, event catering and land holdings - small in scale today, but each plays a distinct role in the hospitality value chain or holds asset value for the future.
- Restaurants under one roof - Graviss Restaurants Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary acquired in April 2024 for Rs. 1,00,000, manages and runs restaurants, cafes and clubs, generating turnover of Rs. 388.20 lacs in FY25 though it is still loss-making as it builds scale.
- Catering at a landmark venue - the company runs catering services at ‘Mayfair Rooms’ on Dr. Annie Besant Road in Worli, Mumbai, under an agreement with a promoter-group entity, paying 1% of total receipts from functions and parties for the right to operate there.
- Decoration as a steady side business - Graviss Catering Private Limited, another wholly-owned subsidiary, provides decoration services and, according to management, is able to secure regular orders and earn sufficient margin to cover its fixed costs, reporting a profit after tax of Rs. 82.42 lacs in FY25.
- Land bought for hotels, now held for value - Graviss Hotels and Resorts Limited owns land parcels at Shirdi and Alibaug that were originally purchased for hotel development; with plans changed, the subsidiary is now exploring the sale of these lands and the buildings on them, and management believes their market value exceeds the original cost. The Alibaug parcel is also being used to expand The Mansion House, a 25-room managed property, by adding up to 100 rooms under incentives from the Maharashtra Tourism Policy 2024.
Group structure and partners
The company is a family-controlled listed entity with three wholly-owned subsidiaries, no joint ventures, and a web of related-party arrangements that tie the operating businesses to promoter-held entities.
- Three subsidiaries, fully owned - as of March 2025, the company holds 100% of Graviss Hotels and Resorts Limited, Graviss Catering Private Limited, and Graviss Restaurants Private Limited, with no joint ventures or associate companies in the group.
- Promoter family at the centre - Mr. Ravi Ghai, a Cornell-trained hotelier with over four decades in the industry, serves as Non-Executive Chairman, while his son Mr. Gaurav Ghai is Managing Director; a Family Settlement Agreement signed in August 2023 governs the succession and encumbrance of promoter shares, ensuring control passes to the son upon the father’s lifetime.
- Related-party dealings are woven into operations - the company has transactions with multiple promoter-linked entities, including the entity that owns the Mayfair Rooms venue, the firm from which Graviss Restaurants was acquired, and Hotel Kanakeshwar LLP, a related party involved in the Alibaug expansion. An unsecured loan of Rs. 266.55 lacs from ICE Holdings Pvt Ltd, a related party, was outstanding as of March 2023.
- A six-member board with independent oversight - the board includes three independent directors, one of whom is a woman, alongside the two executive promoters and a professional CEO, Mr. Romil Ratra, who brings over 25 years of experience from Taj, IHG, Starwood and Marriott.