Vikram Kamats Hospitality is a mid-scale Indian hospitality company built on a name that has meant fresh vegetarian food to travellers for eighty years - the Kamats brand. Incorporated in 2007 and listed in 2016, it has grown from a single restaurant identity into a multi-format operation spanning hotels, restaurant chains, cloud kitchens and packaged foods, all held together by one recurring idea: develop the operating system, train the people, then expand through franchises and management contracts rather than owning every asset. That asset-light approach - earning a fee on someone else’s turnover - runs through everything from highway eateries to 4-star business hotels.
Business segments
A single hospitality engine that earns in three ways - fees from franchised and managed outlets, turnover from company-operated properties, and packaged-food sales that feed its own network - all built on the pull of licensed heritage brands.
1. Kamats Restaurants: the brand-licensing engine that built the company
The company does not own the Kamats name; it licenses it, builds the franchise system around it, and collects a royalty on every plate served - a model that turns brand trust into recurring fees without the cost of running most outlets.
- Franchise fees are the core revenue - the company grants franchise rights to independent restaurant operators, providing them with the brand, standardised recipes, centralised raw-material supply and a point-of-sale billing system, and in return earns a fee and royalty typically 5% to 7% of the outlet’s turnover.
- The brands are rented, not owned - the company pays a royalty of 1% of gross turnover to a promoter relative for the ‘Vithal Kamats’ mark and 0.75% of sales to another entity for the ‘Kamats’ mark, both under 15-year agreements, so the franchise income is a spread between what it collects and what it pays out.
- Standardisation makes franchising possible - raw materials like premix, gravy and paste are procured from select third-party suppliers on a centralised basis and dispatched to outlets, so a Kamats thali tastes the same whether it is served on a Gujarat highway or in a Mumbai food court.
- A multi-brand portfolio reduces dependence on one format - the flagship Vithal Kamats brand had 25 franchised outlets as of March 2025, down from 42 five years earlier as highway saturation set in, so the company launched Kamats Legacy (premium South Indian dining, 4 company-operated outlets), Urban Dhaba (Punjabi cuisine with a live bar, 2 outlets) and Pepper Fry (multi-cuisine vegetarian) to reach different customers in different locations.
- A cloud kitchen multiplies reach without multiplying rent - the Multi Brand Kloud Kitchen in Bhandup, Mumbai, runs several of the company’s restaurant brands from a single delivery-and-takeaway-only facility, using the same staff and infrastructure to serve different cuisines and keep overheads low.
2. VITS Hotels: the mid-market hotel platform that collects management fees
The company finds underperforming hotel properties, puts its VITS brand on them, and either leases and operates them itself or - more often - manages them for the owner in exchange for a slice of the turnover, so room inventory grows without buying buildings.
- Two models, one brand - in the COCO/Leased model the company takes on the property, books the revenue and bears the risk; in the Managed/Franchised model it lends the VITS or VITS Select name to a third-party owner, all sales stay on the owner’s books, and the company collects a fee and royalty typically 5% of the hotel’s turnover.
- Managed hotels dominate the portfolio - as of September 2025, the group had 7 leased hotels and 12 managed and franchised hotels, for a total of 19 operating properties with one more under construction, meaning nearly two-thirds of the portfolio generates fees without the company carrying the property on its balance sheet.
- The subsidiary that runs it is 84%-owned - the hotel business operates primarily through Vitizen Hotels Ltd, a material subsidiary acquired in March 2022 that had already been managing 14 star-category hotels under the VITS and Purple Beds brands across Maharashtra, Gujarat and the North.
- Expansion is a steady drumbeat of signings - recent additions include a long-term lease at Manyata Tech Park in Bengaluru targeting corporate travellers, a 24-room property in Nashik that opened in December 2025, a management agreement for a 33-chalet resort with three swimming pools and a banquet at Igatpuri, and the acquisition of a 101-room hotel on an ownership basis in Daman.
- Occupancy anchors the economics - system-wide hotel occupancy was 61% with an average room rate of INR 3,085 as of September 2025, giving a sense of the mid-market positioning: full enough to generate steady fees, priced accessibly for the corporate and leisure traveller.
3. Food production and packaged goods: the supply chain that feeds itself
The company makes ready-to-eat Indian foods and namkeens under its own VKHL brand, supplying its restaurants and franchisees first - which guarantees a captive customer - and then selling the surplus through retail shops and wholesalers.
- Captive demand de-risks production - the food products, including mini bhakarvadi, methi gathiya and thikha boondi, are available at the restaurants of the Company and are distributed through wholesalers, retail shops, sweet marts, etc., so a base level of offtake is built in before a single packet reaches a shop shelf.
- Shared infrastructure keeps costs down - the same production capability that stocks the restaurants also supports the cloud kitchen’s multi-brand delivery model, so the kitchen, staff and procurement serve several revenue streams at once.
Hospitality Academy and training
The company runs its own training academy to solve the industry’s skilled-labour problem - and turns the solution into a paid certification business.
- KHAS trains for its own kitchens and beyond - the Kamats Hospitality Academy of Skill at Panvel teaches cuisine preparation, POS billing, material management, quality and cost control, with an assurance of employment on completion, so the company grows its own pipeline of standardised staff.
- Certification programmes generate revenue - the academy offers paid Restaurant Manager and Chef Training Certification Programmes that are open to franchise owners and external chefs, making the training function a small profit centre in its own right.
Group structure and partners
The listed company sits atop a web of brand-licensing agreements, a hotel subsidiary it once agreed to sell, and a promoter group that holds significant equity - the structure reflects the asset-light philosophy, where even the core brand is leased rather than owned.
- The listed entity is the operating company - Vikram Kamats Hospitality Ltd (formerly Vidli Restaurants Limited) is the holding company, operating in a single segment of hospitality and food products, with its shares traded on the BSE Main Board under the Scrip ID ‘VIDLI’ as of December 6, 2024.
- The brands are licensed from related parties - the ‘Vithal Kamats’ trademark comes from a promoter relative, the ‘Kamats’ mark from Kamat Holiday Resorts (Silvassa) Ltd, and the Silvassa hotel is operated under a 10-year agreement extendable by another 10 years with Kamats Worldwide Food Services, so a portion of every rupee earned flows to entities connected to the founding family.
- Promoters and institutional investors back the company - Dr. Vikram V. Kamat and Dr. Vidhi V. Kamat together held over 26 lakh equity shares as of March 2025, and a 2024 fundraise of approximately INR 28 crore brought in investors including the Polycab Group, Sattva Group and a foreign portfolio investor.
- An international toehold exists but is nascent - the company holds a small investment in Vits Hospitality Company Ltd in Thailand and had plans to acquire 75% of Kamats Canada Limited, a newly incorporated entity with no turnover, to expand its restaurant presence into international markets.