Hotel owner and operator Indian Hotels Company Limited, whose holdings include luxury brand Taj Hotels & Resorts and economy brand Ginger Hotels, acquired the majority stake in Indian lifestyle hotel brand and operator Tree of Life.
Tree of Life is a division of conglomerate and developer Ambuja Neotia Group.
The Telegraph of India said ICHL has acquired 55% of the management and operations of Tree of Life and that the deal had a value of 180 million rupees ($2.14 million).
Ambuja Neotia, which was founded in the 1950s with interests in oil and fuel, has developed seven hotels Taj currently operates. Two of those hotels are the 73-room Taj Chia Kutir Resort & Spa in Darjeeling and 69-room Taj Guras Kutir Resort & Spa in Gangtok, also close to the Himalayas mountain chain.
It bought the Tree of Life brand from Indian firm Rajscape Hotels Private Ltd. for an undisclosed sum in November 2023, the newspaper reports.
Puneet Chhatwal, IHCL’s managing director and CEO, said a plan is in place to expand Tree of Life’s 19 open and two pipeline hotels to 100 hotels by 2030, due to the company “recognizing the growing demand for experiential leisure.”
Tree of Life specializes in managing hotels that embody "the essence of authentic India in over 15 destinations, including off-beat locations like Dared, Dehradun, Varanasi, Binsar, Kumaon and Udaipurwati," according to IHCL.
IHCL, a division of another conglomerate, Tata Group, currently has a portfolio of 350 hotels and with another 118 in development. According to the Bombay Stock Exchange, it has a market capitalization of approximately $7 billion.