chennai vikram mohan serial entrepreneur who has businesses in multiple sectors including logistics servicing the rail and defence sector is now going strong in his recent foray into the hospitality sector mohan chairman of vm hospitality speaks to toi on his strategy in the highlycompetitive restaurant business excerptswhat made you foray into the restaurant businessi was always passionate about food and wanted to enter the business having set up unique cuisines like ethiopian and parsi through speciality dining brands abyssinian and baltlivala khanaboy in the fine dining space currently at 9 i plan to set up over 30 restaurants by 2021 and introduce south east asian cuisine to the south indian audience could you share some details about profitability and customer recognitionthe failure rate in the industry is generally high because most operations dont have a usp or a long term vision however all our restaurants are profitable i am confident of success because we have a researchbacked approach to setting up the restaurant before setting up the brand we spend about 18 months researching on supply chain customer preferences etc we have been recipients of awards for savya rasa in the fine dining segment and double roti in the casual dining spacebesides restaurant business vm hospitality is also into experiential boutique hotels what are your plans in the spacethe boutique hotel brand dvara was set up after 2 years of research to have curated experiences for guests the properties will have 812 rooms and operate in the luxury boutique segment with an investment of rs 8 to 9 crore per property the first one set up in coimbatore has over 50 occupancy we hope to open in kodaikanal mudumalai by 2018while your stint in hospitality is clearly paying off you also head the automotive solutions company pricol how has it performedin line with where the automotive industry is headed we are ready to deal with the entry of electric vehicles our growth is higher than industry average we currently have 3 greenfield projects and have acquired 3 companies we are open to more acquisitions and are hoping to clock revenue of rs 3000 crore by 2020