Taking hospitality and culinary art to a new level

The world of professional cooking and hospitality is opening the door to a number of career opportunities in India, thanks to a rise in the number of Indians travelling abroad and their growing interest in food, particularly cooking.

“Today people are travelling like never before and this has brought new challenges to the hospitality industry, especially newer concepts and trends in food and beverage. To become a professional chef, one has to be creative, acquainted with details and above all should be passionate about food,” said Ravish Arora, director, Redcarpet Hotel and Culinary Academy (RHCA).

The co-founder directors of RHCA, Ravish Arora and Rajendra Kelshikar, started their career as chefs and have spent over 30 years in the hospitality industry.

“We started the academy to teach the fundamentals of culinary art and hospitality management. The knowledge we have gained all through these years can now be put to proper use,” said Kelshikar.

A graduate of the Bombay Catering College, Arora began his career as a sous chef at Oberoi Towers in Mumbai. Later, he shifted to Pune and joined the Blue Diamond Hotel as an executive chef and went on to become a food and beverage manager.

Starting his career as an assistant chef at the Taj Continental in Mumbai, Kelshikar came to Pune and was appointed the CEO of Blue Diamond group of hotels in Pune. Both quit their jobs at the Blue Diamond and started their own entrepreneurial venture, Inn-Venue Hospitality Management. It is a hospitality company in Pune that owns and manages two world cuisine restaurants; Polkadots, ten bakery and patisserie shops; ‘Baker’s Basket’ and a 4-star business boutique hotel, Deccan Rendezvous.

The academy is a 45,000 square feet independent building, which reflects the complex relationship between the co-founders and the passion for their profession. “Everything that you see in the infrastructure of the building is personally designed and structured by both of us. We don’t want to preach the students but set an example for them. It is very important to have some kind of culture,” said Kelshikar.

To instill the values necessary for success in the hospitality industry and introduce the students to the culture and thought process, Kelshikar said, “Besides the functional curriculum, we have turned the whole interior of the building into a speaking knowledge bank. The corridor walls, stairway walls, the lobby, the classrooms, every wall in the building are beautifully covered with various picture frames, as pointers that articulate and express the hotel and culinary education.”

Just like airports, seaports and railway stations, the hotel industry is also an infrastructure industry, informed Arora and said that it is people oriented business with lots of comprehensions.