Entrepreneurship is not an easy feat and anybody who is starting a business has to work hard to get success. Today, we will talk about one such man – Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi, who started as a billing clerk at The Cecil Hotel in Shimla making Rs 50 per month to founding Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, India’s second-largest hotel company, with 31 hotels in India, Egypt, Indonesia, UAE, Mauritius, and Saudi Arabia.
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Mohan Singh Oberoi was born in a Khatri family in Bhaun, a minor village of Jhelum District (now Chakwal District) in Pakistan’s Punjab. Mohan Singh Oberoi was just six months old when his father passed away. After attending schools in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi and passing the Intermediate College Examination in Lahore Pakistan, Mohan Singh Oberoi discontinued his studies due to a lack of resources and started working as a manager in his uncle’s shoe business in Lahore.
The factory was later closed after a year because of rioting in Amritsar.
Mohan Singh Oberoi married Ishran Devi in 1920, the daughter of Shri Ushnak Rai belonged to his village. He relocated to Sargodha in present-day Pakistan after marriage while looking for work to sustain a family. Mohan Singh Oberoi could not find a job and came back to his mother to his home village in the Jhelum district. Mohan Singh Oberoi’s mother then persuaded him to go back to his in-laws’ and gave him Rs 25 as he was departing.
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Mohan Singh Oberoi arrived in Shimla in 1922 with Rs 25 in his pocket and got a job at The Cecil Hotel in Shimla. He was hired as a front desk clerk at a salary of Rs 50 each month. But it was Mohan Singh Oberoi’s hard work with which he won the heart of his bosses and handed over the responsibility of managing the hotel.
In 1934, Mohan Singh Oberoi, after mortgaging all his assets and his wife’s jewellery, purchased his first piece of property, The Clarkes Hotel, from his mentor.
In the next five years after that, thanks to his determination, Mohan Singh Oberoi repaid the complete amount of the mortgage and agreed to a lease to operate the 500-room Grand Hotel in Calcutta, which had been put up for sale because of a cholera epidemic.
He turned the hotel into a commercial success and went on to create India’s second-largest hotel company, operating under the Oberoi Hotels and Resorts and Trident brands.
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As of now, the company employs more than 12,000 people worldwide and owns and operates 31 luxury hotels and luxury cruise ships in five countries.
The British government also awarded Oberoi the title of “Rai Bahadur” in 1943 in recognition of his contributions to the Crown. In 2001, he received the Padma Bhushan.
Mohan Singh Oberoi died on May 3, 2002, at the age of 103.
