Dare to Dream (Penguin Books)

Born in a small village in Punjab at the turn of the century, Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi began his career in the hotel industry on a fifty-rupee-a-month wage at Simla’s Cecil Hotel.

But he was not destined to remain in his lowly position for long. With a combination of clear-sighted thinking, frugality and sheer hard work, he managed to put together a plan and the finances necessary to acquire his first hotel: Clarkes.

That was only the beginning . . . Decades later, The Oberoi Group has twenty-eight hotels and four luxury Nile cruisers, girdles the globe, and is acknowledged as a standard-setter.

In this well-researched and candid biography, written with the cooperation of M.S. Oberoi, Bachi J. Karkaria describes how a man of modest beginnings became the head of an internationally celebrated hotel chain, and details how a major business is established, operated and maintained at the top.