Karambir Kang: The Stoic
There’s a running joke at the Indian Hotels Group. If Karambir Kang was in a plane and saw a corporate conference below, he’d say “Jump!” It’s an inside joke. The kind you only get well after you’ve spent years with a person. They all crack up.
But it’s a joke that fits the guy. He is a bulldog. You can see it in his face. His eyes the crayon box colour steel blue. The thinking creases in his forehead. A set jaw. He is the guy who would sniff a deal and be there. Who talked only of market share, and making it bigger. The guy who made the hotel profitable.
“He was always picked out to do the tough jobs,” says a colleague at the Taj. “He could get work out of a team like no one else could,” says another. Karambir was always a seller. A fixer. He got to run international conferences, which everyone knew was the “cash cow”. He was sent to Lucknow to launch a new Taj hotel. And as an aside, he also had to make the city a tourist destination. He was sent to Delhi to fix the struggling Taj properties there. More than once, he was called to take the morning flight to a city, and when he got there, told he was taking over. “Have your wife courier your clothes. We need you here now,” senior management told him.
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Image: Dinesh Krishnan
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DOER OF BRAVE DEEDS: When the Taj was attacked Kang's parents, Jagtar and Kanwaljit Kang, urged him to live up to his name and save the guests | |
Did he like it? His mouth goes from a line to a V when talking about it. The alert Karambir smile. “No day is the same in hotels. The challenges are always different. You know, from my batch at college, only two of us have stayed in the same job? I’ve stayed here so long because I love this place.”
And Karambir was the kind of boss you wanted to have. Who let you do your thing. Who made the long hours in a hotel compress. His employees said they looked forward to going to work when Karambir was there.
Karambir also had to travel. Most often, with Partho Chatterjee, then his boss at the Taj. Partho was deathly afraid of flying. When Partho told Karambir, he only laughed. “I’ll make you fearless,” he said. Instead, the entire flight, Karambir tried to scare Partho. “Isn’t that lightning outside?” Karambir asked, pointing to the airplane lights in mock fear. “Some joker just threw something out of the plane,” he added, pointing elsewhere. “But the windows don’t open!” replied a petrified Partho. “Must be a UFO then,” said Karambir, pretending to be serious. By the end of the flight, Partho was laughing so hard he wasn’t afraid.
“That was how Karambir was,” says Partho.
Like his role in “Arms and the Man”, Karambir was comic relief for everyone. It made him perfect for the long, sometimes crazy hours of hoteliering. He also loved good food, good wine, and good cigars. The hospitality trifecta. His mother says he’s so hospitable she often joked he should be a housewife.
The boyish Binny didn’t disappear, however. When Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits came to play in Mumbai two years ago, Karambir was beside himself. Knopfler stayed at the Taj, but it was the idea of seeing his idol in concert that brought out the boyish excitement. Sometimes, employees would forget the bulldog for a second. But he was always there. When Karambir was in Delhi in 1998, he brought the hotel from number five to number one in just a year. When he took over Taj Lands End in Mumbai, he took occupancy from 30 to 80 percent in three months.
Few people in hotels move from sales to running the ship. But in 2006, Director of Tata Sons, R.K. Krishna Kumar, took a chance on the man. “They asked me to be GM. It was kind of like putting me in the deep end,” says Karambir.
Of course, there would probably be cracks. How could a bulldog know cutlery? How could a salesman understand ergonomics? But when the next team came to take over at Taj Lands End, they were floored. “He was running a perfectly smooth sailing ship.”
Kang’s next captainship: the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower in Colaba, Mumbai.
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