For barons, business blends with nostalgia

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Mar 14, 2018  :Darjeeling: The Hill Business Summit provided many industrialists with a rare platform to trace their roots to the region and promise projects.

Rudra Chatterjee, the managing director of Luxmi Group which owns the Makaibari tea garden in Kurseong, urged hill residents to keep welcoming investors and tourists.

"The people here are brave, loyal and hardworking. A time comes when a region changes and this is the time. We need to keep coming back, peace must be maintained and we must keep inviting investors to the region," said Chatterjee.

He promised to open more Makaibari kiosks in the hills to employ the children of garden workers and rolled out plans for a sports and hospitality project.

The boss of Keventer Agro, one of the biggest food processing chains in Bengal that started from Darjeeling, promised to "correct" a gap. "After four decades, we have come back to the birth of Keventer. I don't know why we never thought of coming to Darjeeling to look into our roots. Keventer has a food-processing unit in every district of Bengal but not in Darjeeling. I am here to correct this," a nostalgic Mayank Jalan, Keventer's MD, said.

Jalan promised to "figure out" what the firm needs to do in Darjeeling within the next 24 months. Keventer's in Darjeeling is famous for its breakfast, although the restaurant is no longer associated with Jalan's company but owned by a local entrepreneur, Robin Jha.

Chandrajit Banerjee, director-general of trade body CII, recounted his family ties with Darjeeling. "It is such a great place to come back after nearly 37 years. It feels special because my grandfather started a business here and my father cultivated it before leaving for Calcutta," said Banerjee before announcing a series of initiatives that the CII intends to take up in the hills.

For Harsh Neotia, it has been a wait of over a decade. "For the past 13-14 years, I have been visiting north Bengal and I always aspired to do something in Darjeeling. It is one of the most astounding places but for one reason or another, we could not do (invest in projects)," said Neotia.

Neotia's group is developing two properties, at Ghoom and Makaibari.

"Two hospitality units are coming up at an investment of Rs 150 crore each. The Makaibari project is likely to be completed by 2019 and the first phase of Ghoom by 2020," said Neotia, who also expressed a desire to explore opportunities in the hills' education sector.