“We train students to think like operators, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers!”

What inspired you to co-found the Indian School of Hospitality (ISH)?

Hospitality education in India has been treated as skill training, not education. It was built to produce workers, not thinkers. I co-founded ISH to challenge that design. We built India’s first business school for hospitality to reframe the sector as a serious academic and economic discipline. I saw young people trained to follow instructions, not lead businesses. I saw institutions built to fill vacancies, not create visionaries. ISH was designed to end that cycle.

How do you see ISH’s role in the transformation of hospitality education in India?

ISH established a new grammar for hospitality education in India. We dismantled the outdated hotel management training model that reduced hospitality to operational skills. We introduced liberal hospitality education as a business discipline. We integrated culinary, management, entrepreneurship, and services into one academic framework.

We built a learning environment where industry sits inside the classroom. We created pathways that begin in India and continue across global campuses. We changed what it means to study hospitality in this country.

What does democratising education mean to you in practice, and how are you bringing that vision to life at ISH?

Democratising education means giving high-agency students access to quality education, regardless of affordability. We built ISH to ensure students from every part of society can access world-class programmes. We activated our endowment fund, partnered with industry, and collaborated with high-net-worth individuals committed to long-term change.

We reward merit through SIP, bringing students with hunger, intent, and potential into the mainstream hospitality economy. These individuals will build the next five decades of India’s service infrastructure. We treat education as a serious economic lever. We aim to scale this model in the next 10 years, making access structural, not selective.

How has ISH’s integration into the Sommet Education network shaped its global outlook and opportunities for students?

Sommet Education provided ISH with a global operating system.We integrated with Les Roches, École Ducasse, At-Sunrice Singapore, and GESS Education Australia to create mobility, credentials, and career portability across borders.

We embedded global thinking into Indian education and ensured talent development stays rooted in the country. We now run programmes where students begin in India and complete their education in Switzerland, Spain, France, Singapore, or Australia. We built a global loop that starts with India and returns value to India.

What sets ISH’s curriculum apart from other hospitality schools in India and beyond?

ISH replaced the checklist approach to hospitality education with a curriculum designed around business outcomes. From day one, we train students to think like operators, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. We map every course to economic logic and integrate service behaviour with finance, marketing, and leadership.

We embed commercial acumen across disciplines, from culinary to management. We assess technical skills, business judgment, and personal growth with equal weight. We operate an ecosystem that mirrors the real economy.

What does liberal hospitality education mean to you, and how do you see it evolving globally?

Liberal hospitality education builds agency through business fluency and behavioural intelligence.We prepare students to navigate complexity, lead service-driven enterprises, and design human experiences with commercial intent.

We position hospitality as the fourth pillar of the economy, alongside technology, finance, and manufacturing. This model evolves with consumption, mobility, and experience-led industries. ISH drives this shift by integrating strategy, service, and scale into one academic platform.

What’s your long-term vision for ISH and its place in the Indian and global education ecosystem?

ISH will anchor India’s next-gen education system for services, hospitality, and experience-driven sectors. We will expand across domains that power the services economy. We will build campuses, programmes, and platforms that prepare students to create, manage, and lead complex ecosystems.

We will align with India’s $10 trillion ambition, deliver outcomes at scale, and ensure that every student moves through ISH with clarity, dignity, and economic agency.

What are the next big opportunities or challenges you see on the horizon for hospitality education in India?

Over the next two decades, India will move hundreds of millions into the services economy. The opportunity lies in building institutions that produce professionals with commercial instinct, operational depth, and cultural literacy. The challenge lies in dismantling systems that train job fillers rather than problem solvers.

Education must align with consumption, infrastructure, and entrepreneurship. It must prepare students to participate in and shape the markets they enter.

If you could change one thing about the way hospitality is perceived or taught in India, what would it be?

I would eliminate the perception of hospitality as a fallback option. Liberal hospitality education develops capability. It prepares individuals to build businesses, lead teams, and deliver outcomes across the economy.

As India moves toward a consumption-first future, the country needs people who can design experiences, manage complexity, and understand behaviour. You can build the product, you can power the infrastructure, but if you want to serve people, you need hospitality graduates. They understand detail, context, emotion, and scale.

This shift in perception will accelerate ambition, attract talent, and shape a generation of service-first entrepreneurs.

by Vinodini Rao