If you pay a visit to Mumbai’s Butterfly High at Bandra Kurla Complex, or the Bigg Small Café & Bar at Saki Naka in Andheri, you might just catch Pawan Shahri chatting with the guests, or better still, joining in for a dance with complete strangers! “My college life has been all about making people party and deep down, that’s what I always want to do. That’s what defines me – making people have a good time,” says the 25-year-old, Managing Partner of One Hospitality, his firm that houses flagship fine dining properties.
The serial entrepreneur is the driving force behind five successful businesses today, including Chrome Nightlife, a consultancy firm, Chrome Asia, synonymous with experiential branding and marketing, Label, an artist management firm and One Consult, that offers new restaurant set-ups and menu consultations, apart from One Hospitality. While Butterfly High’s first outlet in BKC is already doing well, he has plans to open another one early next year. There’s lots more in store with Tringg, a table reservation app for restaurants under the One Hospitality banner, a one of a kind beer festival called The Great Ale Fest across 35 outlets and one of Mumbai’s biggest New Year Eve events, Lost In. TMM caught hold of him in the middle of all this to find out more about him and his plans…
Your Twitter bio reads ‘A person who has realized that life is nothing more than food, sleep, music, and chocolate. Everything else we do is just to get the better of these four’.
That was 16-year-old for me! (laughs) I did believe that at that time and I stand by that even today. All of us at some point want to indulge in the things we love.
How did you develop this interest in the hospitality sector?
When I was in college, we would go and check out new places but I would often be denied entry into clubs. I thought the one way to get entry would be to start working with the place. It started off like that, from promoting and marketing nightclubs to eventually learning a lot about hospitality. I found some great mentors who taught me how the business works. Eventually, I had a fair share of doing multiple events and concerts, and managing nightclubs before I got into the hospitality business properly.
So, it’s been a complete hands-on experience for you…
Yes, it’s been complete practical and zero theory. Many people get into the business at 21-22 and then they start realizing how the industry works. In my initial five years, I worked across multiple verticals. Chrome Nightlife was the agency I founded while I was in college.
Handling so many verticals, what is the biggest challenge you face?
Our business module is such that you wake up every day, evolve, grow and figure what is the next big thing we want to innovate and Butterfly High put that across our verticals. For instance, around the restaurants, we want to figure out what’s the next big concept or if we have taken up branding or design, what’s going to be the most relatable theme for the next five years of this brand. So, it’s about looking within the industry, figuring out the trends which were there in the past and deciding what we want to do.
You recently opened the Bigg Small Café & Bar, tell us about that.
My first hospitality venture was Butterfly High which we opened almost two years ago. Now is the time to expand into one more market which is similar to Bandra Kurla Complex but with rentals on our side. We thought Saki Naka is a great option. We put down forward our strengths and launched Bigg Small. Since the first day of its opening, it’s become a corporate drinking hole.
Future plans?
We are opening another outlet of Butterfly High in Thane. Work is underway on that. We want to figure out a couple of key brands we want to open, specifically in terms of cuisine. With Butterfly High and Bigg Small, it’s world cuisine and comfort food. We want to expand more into the Asian and oriental space. So that’s one more brand we are going to introduce next year. We are also starting our chain of QSR focusing on a single product module. That’s in the ideation process.
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