Sayaji Hotels Ltd is a home-grown Indian hospitality company built on the belief that a hotel stay should feel personal - what it calls “Yours Truly” service - and that conviction has carried it from a single property to a pan-India portfolio of individually designed hotels over three decades. Promoted by the Vadodara-based Dhanani family and radically restructured in 2023, the company today operates as a pure-play hoteliering business that earns its keep from rooms, food and beverage, and allied services, with social events like weddings driving roughly half of all revenue. The recurring approach is an asset-light, multi-brand strategy: three distinct brands - Sayaji, Effotel and Enrise - each aimed at a different tier of the market, so the company can grow its footprint without tying up all its capital in bricks and mortar.
Business segments
A single engine with three brand gears - a hoteliering business that runs owned and leased properties across upscale, mid-scale and budget tiers, each brand pulling a different traveller while the same operational backbone serves them all.
1. Owned and leased hotels: the core hospitality engine
The company makes its money by putting heads in beds and plates on tables - running a portfolio of hotels where it controls the property, the staff and the guest experience, with social events contributing more than half of total revenue.
- Three brands, three price points - the flagship Sayaji & Sayaji Resorts & Spa brand operates 10 upscale hotels in cities such as Udaipur, Indore and Raipur, with six more in the pipeline; Effotel runs seven mid-scale properties in locations like Dehradun and Goa; and Enrise, the budget brand, has the widest reach with 14 hotels open and another 15 under development, stretching from Nagpur to Dwarka. That tiered architecture lets the company capture business travellers, leisure guests and MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events) visitors without one brand cannibalising another.
- Weddings are the economic anchor - food and beverage events, primarily social gatherings like weddings, account for over half of total revenues, which makes the business highly seasonal but also gives it a predictable demand floor in the markets where it operates.
- Direct operational control - unlike a franchisor, the company manages the property, employs the staff (740 people as of March 2025) and runs documented internal controls across every hotel function, so the guest experience stays consistent whether the guest is in Kolhapur or Jamnagar.
- Local sourcing, central logistics - it buys local produce from small-scale farmers, women’s self-help groups and micro-enterprises, while a unified warehousing and distribution system serves hotel needs through regional hubs instead of each property procuring on its own. That keeps the supply chain lean and ties the hotels to their communities.
- Sustainability as an operating discipline - a solar plant at the Raipur hotel, more than 50% of wet waste and used water recycled, an 80% reduction in food waste through dedicated monitoring staff, and all e-waste sent to certified recyclers. These are not just credentials; they lower utility and disposal costs across the portfolio.
Group structure and partners
The 2023 restructuring split the original company into three listed entities, leaving Sayaji Hotels Ltd as a lean operating company with a web of related-party arrangements, a housekeeping subsidiary, and a stake in a well-known restaurant chain.
- The great unbundling - under a scheme effective August 2023, the company’s investments in Sayaji Hotels (Indore) Ltd, Sayaji Hotels Management Ltd and Sayaji Hotels (Pune) Ltd were cancelled, and the Indore and Pune hotel undertakings were demerged into separate listed entities, while Ahilya Hotels Limited was amalgamated into the company. Shareholders received shares in the resulting companies, and the company’s authorised share capital was reduced.
- A housekeeping arm and a restaurant associate - the wholly-owned subsidiary Sayaji Housekeeping Services Limited sits under the company, while it holds an investment in associate Barbeque-Nation Hospitality Limited and earns management consultancy fees from it.
- Related-party fabric - the company pays significant lease rent to Prinite Hospitality Private Limited (a related party) and receives lease rent and business support fees from its former subsidiaries and other promoter-linked entities such as Malwa Hospitality Private Limited and Kshipra Restaurants Private Limited. In FY25, it also received a loan from key management personnel.
- Promoter grip and a flagged dispute - promoters held about 66% of the equity as of January 2025, down from roughly 75% before the restructuring, following the reclassification of two outgoing promoters to the public category. The company is contesting a lease cancellation by the Indore Development Authority over its flagship Indore property; the Indore High Court has stayed eviction proceedings.
- Strategic side-bets - the company holds a 26% stake in SRSB Infrastructure Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle for a project in Nava Raipur Atal Nagar, and another 26% stake in Avanir Wellness Resorts Private Limited, an SPV incorporated for developing an iconic wellness centre under a tender from the Nava Raipur Atal Nagar Vikas Pradhikaran.