Samyukta Nair on building an international business

Having imbibed so much as a member of the Leela founding family, Nair brings her experience to the London dining scene, and will be opening two new restaurants in Mayfair this year

Samyukta Nair has just recovered from Covid but had she not mentioned it, no one would be able to tell. Her voice is still as infectiously enthusiastic as ever. “The way that London welcomed India, no one else does. And I think it was the perfect choice for that particular project, which then gave wings to everything else,” she says. She’s talking about Jamavar, the Indian restaurant that started life at The Leela Palace Bengaluru, before expanding with locations, first within India and then abroad. In London, Nair is quick to point out, “it opened, and within eight months got a Michelin star.” That was back in 2017.

Serial entrepreneur

That restaurant was Nair’s first foray on her own, and since then she’s opened two more standalones in Mayfair—Bombay Bustle and MiMi Mei Fair. This year, she’ll be opening two more, KOYN and Socca. While the former is a two-storeyed Japanese restaurant in the building that housed the former US Embassy and the Canadian High Commission, the latter will showcase coastal French cuisine. Earlier this year, an outpost of Jamavar was opened in Doha. As the portfolio of eateries has grown, last August, Nair and her father, Dinesh Nair, set up LSL Capital, a holding company. “That name,” she points out, “is an homage to Leela Scottish Lace–really the company that my grandfather started as a precursor to The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts.”

About the holding company, she explains, “LSL Capital is family-funded. My father is the investing partner and I am the creative director and the CEO. I think the coming together of both of us means that we bring to the table different strengths.” Nair has been steadily building the business since 2016, and it’s something that she and her father have full ownership of. It should be noted that The Leela Group is managed by Brookfield Asset Management as of 2019 and LSL Capital is not related to the Indian hotel brand at all.

For Nair, London is very much like home. “I did my Master’s here. It was also a city we frequented when we went to New York when I was much younger, and it also feels like somewhere in the centre of the world.” She’s no stranger to entrepreneurship, having founded two brands while living in Mumbai: Clove, the now-shuttered lifestyle store that was housed in Colaba and Dandelion, which Nair describes as, “my sleepwear label that’s now grown into being a lifestyle label.” The latter crossed over to London last weekend, with a capsule collection at Bombay Bustle.

A family legacy

Nair’s life and entrepreneurial ventures are, in some ways, intertwined. “I consider myself as a global Indian, and that, I think, is a matter of huge pride. I’m very proud of who I am, where I come from, my roots, my heritage, my family legacy in hospitality–all of that comes from India, and Bombay is home.” She has spent time working at The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts and elaborates, “I think it was while working as a protégé to my mother and when we were building The Leela Palace Udaipur as well as in Chennai and New Delhi, that I felt I really wanted to do this. I then went on to study at hotel school. It taught me that we’re in the business of people. You don’t realise it, because hospitality is very much that.”

For her restaurants, Nair is working with only the best, especially when it comes to the chefs in each kitchen. She is drawing on “relationships built over time,” and credits her father, who led the food programme at the Leela with both knowledge and contacts saying, “By virtue of just eating with him I had this little black book and I’m now able to share it with the world.” While Jamavar’s head chef Surender Mohan started his career at the Leela and won a Michelin star with the restaurant, at Socca, chef Claude Bosi has already won two Michelin stars in the city. She explains how she and her father came to settle on Bosi. “We got the site that was Richoux, and it was in the midst of the pandemic. We had the site and didn’t know what to do. We were yearning to eat that kind of simple, produce-led cuisine that’s perfect for the heat, and he said Claude, and both of us jumped at it.” At KOYN, Rhys Cattermoul, who’s been at Nobu Hong Kong and Berkeley Street, will be helming the kitchen.

A fair share of challenges

Nair does admit though, “I really think that right now, the hospitality industry is going through its most challenging time. Whether you’re in India or in the United Kingdom, I think it's very very difficult to manage [a business] because there are so many moving parts.” She goes on to explain that while the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the industry globally, the UK has also had to deal with Brexit. However, as she points out, and as seen by the chefs she’s working with, “Culturally it's incredible to be able to work in the UK because you have access to a wide diaspora of people that are willing to migrate here or live here.”

London, then, doesn’t feel like a move but more like the culmination of Nair’s singular journey, and life. She says, “A lot of things in my life have happened quite serendipitously,” before listing her career as one of those things. Describing these last few years, she says, “It gives me the opportunity to partner with my dad and that’s also quite nostalgic, because all my memories have been made around my dining table and different tables at family lunches and dinners across all these cities. I think being able to give a life to them by way of different brands in the realm of hospitality is probably what you’ll see dotted around Mayfair.” As her empire expands further, it’s clear that Nair is well on her way to creating the company that she aspires to, or, in her words, a “boutique hospitality agency that will promote bespoke culinary experiences.”

Also Read: Mumbai-based restaurateur Gauri Devidayal on the lessons she has learnt from failure

Also Read: Chef Alex Sanchez: “I am fascinated that food can be infinitely complex within its simplicity"

Also Read: Cooking up a Revolution: An Interview with Chef Massimo Bottura