Indian Hotels Company Limited, which owns hotel brands such as Taj Hotels and Ginger Hotels, has completed its acquisition of the majority stake in Tree of Life Resorts & Hotels.
IHCL first announced the acquisition back in November.
According to newspaper The Hindu Business Line, Mumbai-based IHCL acquired 7,989 equity shares for 22,100 Indian rupees ($255.40) a share on Jan. 13 for a total remuneration of approximately 176.6 million Indian rupees ($2.04 million). When the deal was first announced months ago, The Telegraph of India said IHCL planned to acquire 55% of the management and operations of Tree of Life for a value of 180 million Indian rupees.
New Delhi-based Tree of Life, which has 17 resorts and hotels, all in India, was founded in 2005 by owner Rajscape Hotels, which was acquired by Kolkata-based real estate investment firm Ambuja Neotia Group at the end of 2023. Its first hotel opened in 2009.
Ambuja Neotia now becomes a minority owner in Tree of Life and, effectively, a subsidiary of IHCL.
Tree of Life has hotels in destinations including Dharamshala, the home of the Dalai Lama; Corbett, close to Jim Corbett National Park; Gangtok, in the Eastern Himalayas; Varanasi, where annually Hindu pilgrims gather to wash in the eaters of the Ganges River; and Bandhavgarh National Park. The brand centers on destinations that, according to its website, offer a “chance to enjoy the essence of authentic India.”
The Hindu added that the “transaction required no governmental or regulatory approvals and was completed through cash consideration.”
It is not the first piece of business the two companies have conducted with one another.
In February 2024, Indian Hotel Company Limited entered a strategic alliance with Tree of Life to add its — at the time — 14 hotels to IHCL's distribution platform.
The majority-share acquisition resulted in IHCL now having more than 360 hotels in its portfolio, with more than 120 in development.
In related company news, on Jan. 14 IHCL announced the signing of a new Taj Hotels property in Chail, in the Indian province of Himachal Pradesh. A conversion hotel, the new Taj will have 100 rooms.
IHCL, part of Tata Group, has a market capitalization of 1.11 trillion Indian rupees at the end of the most recent day of trading.
In September 2024, its market capitalization topped the 1 trillion rupee mark for the first time, the eighth company owned by Tata to achieve that milestone.