India Focus: Businessman rolls with changing times

While not quite the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the trio of floods, recession and bureaucracy have brought down many a Prague service business in the past decade.

Indian businessman Sanjeev Wadehra was not immune from these events, losing his first restaurant in the 2002 Prague floods, but he has seemingly managed to overcome such challenges to see his hotel and restaurants thrive in recent years.

The Delhi native opened his first restaurant in Prague in 1996, the same year he moved to the country. He now owns and runs a pair of restaurants, Indian Jewel and U Dominikána, and Old Town's Savic Hotel.

"There were not many Indian restaurants," he said of his early days. "Now, they are booming. At that time, Prague was not so open to new things."

Since the demise of that first restaurant, Wadehra has bounced back with various incarnations of hotels and restaurants. In addition to a shift in Czech dining tastes, changes to government policy have made it easier, if not entirely easy, to do business.

Getting the necessary business licenses and permits is smoother now, Wadehra said, speaking of the renovation work he put into his Indian Jewel space, which was formerly an office just behind the Church of Our Lady Before Týn. Still, the hospitality industry is not without new hurdles.

"The top problem was to bring in manpower," Wadehra said of opening Indian Jewel, an upscale Mughali and Tandoori restaurant, in 2009. "All the cooks and wait staff are from India, and in the 1990s, it was much easier to bring them over."

Importing Indian spices is also more burdensome than it was in the old days, with increased European Union-wide standards and paperwork that must be met.  

"We have to import spices for six months or so," Wadehra said. "If we run out, we have to go to Berlin."

The biggest challenge to business in recent years, however, was a global recession that harmed the hospitality industry, which has yet to fully bounce back. Some 5.2 million people visited Prague last year, according to Mag Consulting, the second straight year of increases after visitor numbers fell in 2009.

Wadehra's 27-room Savic Hotel opened in 2006 just off Old Town Square in a 13th-century building and underwent a major renovation in 2008. It provides an interesting test case for how the travel industry has had to adjust in the age of austerity.

"During the recession, we had to drop prices," Wadehra said of the hotel. "In 2011, occupancy was higher than in 2007, but revenue was much lower."

"People are looking for value for their money and are not looking to spend. That was not the case in 2004 or 2005."

Though the occasional stag party may point to the contrary, the type of tourist coming to Prague has also changed over the long term, Wadehra said.

"Now the travelers are more senior travelers or they are students in the summer," he said.

But after some 16 years in Prague, Wadehra and his family consider Prague home. His wife, Mohini, is integral in running both the hotel and restaurant - all of the recipes are hers. His son, Nilaansh, is studying finance at a master's level while interning at assorted Prague branches of major global firms Ernst & Young, PwC and Microsoft.

"It is quite difficult if you don't know the language, and it was quite difficult for me in 1996," Wadehra said. "I went to school and learned the Czech language, though I am still not perfect."

Asked whether he would ever consider a return to India and its booming economy, Wadehra paused before replying: "I am very much invested in a good life here."

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com