Karan Tanna, has recently been appointed as the head of NRAI Youth Committee, He speaks to HT about his new role and about the kind of challenges hospitality industry faces in India.
1. Tell us about your role.
As a head of NRAI Youth Committee I will be curating & executing the agenda of the Youth Committee. We will be forming a core managing team who will work on various agendas of Youth Committee like mentorship, sustainability, content creation for young & new entrepreneurs & much more.
The vision behind launching the NRAI Youth Committee is to create a platform & an eco-system to engage restaurant owners, specially young & new restaurants in value driven activities by providing support & mentorship that will increase sustainability of restaurants.
2. What kind of immediate activities will you take up?
We will have Zonal Committees which will work with central functional leaders to conduct executions in their respective regions and will have quarterly activities. We will make the schedule for mentorship on various topics & start mentorship sessions in various subjects like menu engineering, new product development etc.
We will also take up activities like sustainability, inclusion of new age businesses like food tech, home dining, cloud kitchens & much more.
We will also focus on collaboration with colleges, skill development for budding and emerging restaurateurs and hold conferences. The NRAI Youth Committee will be taking care of a whole gamut of activities to support and promote better standardization and talent across the industry.
3. What are some of the challenges in the industry that bother you? What are you going to do to better it?
As a restaurant industry there are various challenges that we face because it is a very fluid & dynamic industry. Besides, there are quite a few challenges as far as government policies abut the industry are concerned. Some policies on licencing & taxation are not encouraging. However, the main committee of NRAI are taking up these issues with the government and we will see some encouraging results coming out of their discussion very soon.
Also, besides the bigger challenges, there are various challenges in the industry that impacts the industry in a long run. This industry does not have an entry barrier and hence lot of people open restaurants without inadequate knowledge. This leads to high attrition rate in the industry & in the meantime also creates undue competition due to new entrants which also for a moment disturbs the economics of established players.
It’s very important to constantly mentor the young and new restaurateurs & make sure they adopt sustainable strategies to be profitable in long term. We as NRAI Youth Committee will focus on engaging the new age restaurateurs in various learning sessions so that they can avoid a lot of mistakes which will not help them make their business profitable but also not harm the industry as a whole. We want to engage with restaurants at their inception level so as to make them synergized with the industry to remain in tune & increase the overall sustainability rate of the restaurants.
4. What is your take on the hospitality and restaurant industry of India?
India’s Restaurant industry is one of the most exciting in the world. We have one of the highest captive population which is not leveraged. If we compare ourselves to highly populated country like China, we will realize that there is a huge potential to be tapped & we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Excitingly, the restaurant industry is growing at all fronts be it QSR, Speciality cuisine, cloud kitchens/food tech, home dining, catering & all the other verticals. The most exciting part of the Indian restaurant industry is that the Indian food & regional food of India is making a comeback. The new age customer is appreciating Indian food & enjoying the food from various regions of India. This will definitely enable better penetration of Indian food not just in India but entire world.
Simultaneously it is extremely exciting to see how Indian Restaurateurs are looking at markets beyond India & taking Indian food global. It is also encouraging how Indian restaurants are appreciated in the global markets & there are more and more restaurants penetrating across the world.
I think that the next decade is the most exciting for the Indian restaurant industry & that leaves NRAI Youth Committee with a lot of responsibilities to create impact at right time & right places to be able to contribute to the industry in a way that it leverages it’s entire potential.
5. Also, why doesn’t India has a Michelin Star restaurant?
Incidentally the Michelin Star program does not exist in India. That is the only reason why India does not have a Michelin star. However, a few Indian restaurants across the world have Michelin star. Indian restaurants in London, San Francisco, Singapore & Hong Kong have Michelin stars. I’m sure when Michelin Star introduces their program in India there will be quite a few Indian restaurants that will have Michelin stars on their name.
