Born in 1898 in undivided Punjab, Mohan Singh Oberoi rose from a front desk clerk in Shimla to founder of India’s pioneering luxury hotel chain. Mortgaging family assets, he acquired Clarkes and later The Cecil, then launched India’s first true luxury hotel in 1965. Today, The Oberoi Group runs 31 properties across six countries, defining Indian luxury hospitality.
Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi was born on August 15, 1898, in Bhaun, a village in undivided Punjab that now lies in Pakistan. His father died when he was just six months old, and his grandfather took over raising him, making sure he was educated first in Rawalpindi and then in Lahore. A plague outbreak later pushed Oberoi to leave for Shimla, where he took a job as a front desk clerk at The Cecil Hotel on a monthly salary of Rs. 50. The hotel's manager, Ernest Clarke, noticed how hard he worked, and Clarke would go on to buy Shimla's Carlton Hotel and rename it Clarkes Hotel.
In 1934, Oberoi acquired Clarkes Hotel in Shimla, mortgaging his wife's jewellery and his own assets to fund the purchase. That acquisition marks the founding of what would become The Oberoi Group. In 1943, the British government conferred on him the title of Rai Bahadur in recognition of his services. In 1944, the Group went on to acquire The Cecil Hotel itself, the same property where Oberoi had once worked as a clerk, a hotel the Group still owns today, having reopened it after extensive renovation in April 1997.
Having consolidated these early properties, Oberoi became the first Indian hotelier to enter into an agreement with an internationally renowned hotel chain, opening The Oberoi Inter-Continental in New Delhi in 1965. Popularly known as the I-Con, it offered facilities unmatched by any other hotel in the country at the time and is widely credited as India's first luxury hotel, built specifically to attract international travellers to the country. That strategy worked: foreign occupancy at Oberoi properties reportedly rose to an average of 85 per cent in the years that followed. The Group went on to open the 35-storey Oberoi Sheraton in Bombay in 1973, further cementing its position at the top of India's hospitality industry. In 1966, Oberoi also established the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development to train hospitality professionals, an institution that continues to shape the industry today.
Mohan Singh Oberoi died on May 6, 2002, having been recognised over his lifetime with honours including a place in the American Society of Travel Agents Hall of Fame, the International Hotel Association's Man of the World award, and Egypt's Order of the Republic, First Class. He remains widely referred to within the Indian hospitality industry as the father of the Indian hotel industry. His son, Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi, known as Biki, went on to serve as Executive Chairman of EIH Limited, the Group's flagship company, and is credited with placing Oberoi hotels firmly on the international luxury travel map through the opening of properties in key cities worldwide.
Today, The Oberoi Group, headquartered in New Delhi, operates 31 hotels, resorts, and river cruisers across six countries, including India, Indonesia, Mauritius, Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, under its ultra-luxury Oberoi Hotels and Resorts brand and its five-star Trident brand. Ninety-two years after a mortgaged set of jewellery bought a single hotel in Shimla, the Group remains, by most industry accounts, the origin point of luxury hospitality as India understands it today.