Born in 1980, in Mumbai, Gleneagles owner Sharan Pasricha is not a golfer. By self-admission, he has not even followed the traditional hotel school route into the industry. Although, Pasricha said, he has an intellectual curiosity that owns the way he runs his expanding empire. “I don't know how it should be done. My perspective is one of asking why. And when something can't be done, asking why not?” He believes the key is to have the right people around to answer those questions and he has recruited Richard Solomons, former Intercontinental hotels chief executive and Airbnb's Musa Tariq to his advisory board.
“If you surround yourself with people who are way smarter than you are and can add value in ways that you can't … then you've got the beginning of something quite interesting,” Pasricha said. In addition to the famous Scottish golf resort, his company owns the fast-growing Hoxton Hotel brand. The 38 year old bought the original Hoxton in 2012, on the eastern end of London, from the Pret a Manger co-founder Sinclair Beecham. He paid a whopping £65 million for the 208-room Shoreditch property. He focused at the minutest details before pushing it forward for expansion. “I virtually lived in that hotel for a year, tweaking, changing, and learning everything there was to learn.”
Gleneagles is also being expanded. After acquiring the 2014 Ryder Cup venue from Diageo in 2015 for an estimated £150 million, Pasricha set about turning the “sleeping giant into not just the best hotel in Scotland but one of the best in the world”. He has invested £30 million so far, which has helped to put the business on target to increase its underlying earnings from £8 million at acquisition to a level that could boost its value to £350 million. “It was well run and had a brand that was punching well above its weight, but lacked a clarity of vision. What is Gleneagles? Is it a conference facility? Is it a golf venue? Our challenge is to get people coming from further away, staying for longer and doing more,” he said.
Most of the funding comes from his family, particularly his father-in-law Sunil Bharti Mittal, owner of India's third-largest telecom company. If all goes as per plans, he and his father-in-law should do well for themselves from their expanding hotel empire.
