The Leela 40 Years Anniversary Pays Tribute to Employees

MUMBAI, June 1, 2026: The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts has marked four decades since its founding by turning the spotlight on the people who have been at the centre of that journey, the long-serving associates, the management trainees who became senior vice presidents, the marketing executives who joined as their first job and stayed for thirty-one years, the finance assistants who describe the brand in a single word as family. The 40th anniversary began with a corporate townhall that brought together teams from across the company's properties, with a commemorative pinning ceremony and the recognition of associates whose careers are inseparable from the brand's own growth story.

There is a version of a hospitality brand anniversary that focuses on properties opened, markets entered, awards won and revenue milestones crossed. The Leela's 40th has chosen a different emphasis, the human infrastructure behind all of it. That choice is not incidental. It reflects something about how the brand understands itself and how it wants to be understood by the industry and the associates still working within it.

The Leela 40 Years Anniversary Celebrates Workforce at Corporate Townhall

The Leela was founded by Captain C. P. Krishnan Nair in 1986 with a single hotel in Mumbai, The Leela Mumbai, which opened on the city's then-emerging Sahar Road corridor near the international airport. Four decades later, the portfolio stands at 15 hotels, with a pipeline of further properties across India and, increasingly, internationally. The journey from two hotels to fifteen is the growth story. What shaped that journey, the culture, the philosophy, the people who stayed long enough to carry the institutional memory across ownership transitions, leadership changes and the inevitable disruptions of four decades in Indian hospitality, is the human story the 40th anniversary is trying to tell.

Seema Jadhav, Assistant Manager of Marketing at The Leela, has been part of that human story for thirty-one of the forty years. She was there when the portfolio was two properties. She is still there now.

"What began as my first job soon became an opportunity to witness the making of True Indian Luxury. From just two hotels then to 15 today, I have truly grown alongside The Leela."

— Seema Jadhav, Assistant Manager – Marketing, The Leela

That framing, "grown alongside The Leela", is not a standard employee anniversary statement. It describes a mutual relationship: the brand grew and so did she, and the growth ran in both directions across three decades. In a hospitality industry where associate turnover is one of the sector's most persistent structural challenges, someone who has spent thirty-one years in marketing at a single brand is both an anomaly and an argument about the kind of workplace culture that generates that kind of loyalty.

From Management Trainee to Senior Vice President, Sridhar Nair's Four-Decade Journey

The leadership development dimension of The Leela's 40-year story is embodied most clearly in Sridhar Nair, who joined the organisation in his early years as a Management Trainee and has risen to the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager, one of the most complete hospitality career arcs that a single brand can produce.

"Having witnessed The Leela's remarkable evolution firsthand, I have had the privilege of growing alongside the brand through some of its most defining moments. From my early years with the organisation to taking on leadership responsibilities today, the journey has been shaped by learning, growth and an unwavering commitment to excellence. As we celebrate four decades of True Indian Luxury, I feel immense pride in being part of a brand that continues to set benchmarks for Indian hospitality while remaining deeply rooted in its values and people."

— Sridhar Nair, Senior Vice President and General Manager, The Leela

The phrase "unwavering commitment to excellence" is the sort of language that reads as generic in most contexts and specific in this one, because it comes from someone whose career at The Leela began when the brand had one hotel and who is still at the organisation forty years later, having watched it navigate everything from India's economic liberalisation to two ownership transitions to a global pandemic. That is what an unwavering commitment actually looks like across time.

Captain C. P. Krishnan Nair's Vision, Seeing the Finished Story in a Half-Built Space

The Leela's founder, Captain C. P. Krishnan Nair, who passed away in 2014, continues to shape the culture of the organisation through the values and ways of seeing that he instilled across four decades. Anita Kakodkar, Vice President of Architecture and Design, has been with The Leela for twenty-eight years, long enough to have absorbed those lessons directly from the founder himself and to carry them into the physical spaces the brand now occupies.

"Even in a half-built space, he saw the finished story, not just the architecture, but the emotion a guest would one day feel."

— Anita Kakodkar, Vice President – Architecture and Design, The Leela

That specific quality of imagination, the ability to stand in an incomplete structure and understand how it will feel when it is full of light, furniture, guests and the particular atmosphere that good hospitality design creates, is the rarest and most valuable capability in luxury hotel architecture and design. Kakodkar's memory of Krishnan Nair demonstrating that quality directly, on a building site, is a portrait of a founder who was genuinely involved in the physical creation of his hotels rather than someone who approved floor plans from a boardroom.

The philosophy she describes extended beyond design into the broader culture: every detail considered through the lens of the guest experience. It is the operational philosophy that sits beneath The Leela's tagline of Atithi Devo Bhava, the guest is God, and it has been the common thread across every general manager, every chef, every housekeeping associate and every front desk team member who has served under the Leela name since 1986.

Sarita Thomas and the Word That Defines Three Decades at The Leela

The most economical and perhaps most revealing voice in The Leela's 40th anniversary reflections belongs to Sarita Thomas, Executive Assistant in Corporate Finance, who has been with the brand for thirty years. Asked to describe what wearing the Leela name means to her, she answered in a single word.

"Family."

— Sarita Thomas, Executive Assistant – Corporate Finance, The Leela

One word, thirty years of context behind it. The most durable hospitality organisations are the ones where that sentiment is genuinely widespread rather than manufactured, where people who have had the full range of workplace experiences, the difficult seasons and the exceptional ones, still arrive at the same answer. A finance executive choosing the word "family" after three decades in a corporate function at a luxury hotel brand is telling you something about a culture that persists across departments, not just in the guest-facing roles where warmth is most visibly expected.

What Four Decades Actually Builds

The people The Leela is recognising in its 40th anniversary are not outliers in a talent market that has otherwise moved on. They are the product of a deliberate cultural investment, in mentorship, in career progression, in the quality of the daily work environment, that kept people engaged and growing across timescales that most organisations in any sector struggle to sustain.

India's luxury hospitality sector has grown enormously in competitive density over the same four decades. The brands that have entered the market since 1986, both international and domestic, have provided alternatives for every level of associate talent that The Leela might otherwise have retained. That Seema Jadhav is still in marketing after thirty-one years, that Sridhar Nair rose from trainee to SVP without leaving, that Anita Kakodkar has spent twenty-eight years in design at a single company, that Sarita Thomas calls it family after thirty years, none of that happens by accident. It happens because a culture was built, maintained and transmitted across decades, even as ownership changed and the business expanded and the hospitality landscape around it transformed.

That is what The Leela's forty years actually represent. Not just a portfolio of beautiful properties, though those exist. But the human architecture that has kept them beautiful, consistent and alive to the guest's experience year after year, decade after decade.