Encalm looks beyond airport lounges to build ₹5,000 crore hospitality business

Founded in 2021, Encalm began operations the following year. Backed by Singapore-based private equity investor Gateway Partners, it reported revenue of about ₹908 crore in fiscal year 2025 (FY25), according to financial filings accessed through business intelligence platform Tofler. It expects turnover to reach ₹1,200 crore in FY26.

The company is looking to build hotels beyond airport premises, with Delhi and Chennai marking its first major hotel ventures outside the airport ecosystem. “We are also looking at land parcels in Delhi and Chennai. For Delhi, it will be around the airport. As we have done in Goa and Visakhapatnam, we will construct the hotels and give them to brands to operate as we have done with our other hotels, and remain brand-agnostic,” Sharma said.

It already operates Transit by Encalm at Hyderabad airport, which opened in 2024. The 57-room hotel has occupancy of around 80% and an average daily room rate of about ₹6,500, Shama said. The property is also profitable. Two more 5-star airport hotels are expected to launch by the end of 2026 in Goa and Visakhapatnam under the Radisson Blu and Taj Vivanta brands, respectively.

Airport hospitality accounts for around 90% of its revenue at present. The expansion also marks an attempt to reduce its dependence on airports operated by the GMR Group, where most of its current business is concentrated. The company is bidding for individual lounge contracts at Airports Authority of India (AAI)-operated airports, with its first such lounge expected to open in Vadodara in the next three to four months, Sharma said.

The move comes as airport operators, including Adani Airports, develop their own lounge brands, increasing competition in a business where operators depend heavily on payments from banks and airlines. The country’s airport lounge business is dominated by operators such as Travel Food Services, Encalm and Saptagiri Restaurant (Primus Lounge), alongside airport operators such as GMR and Adani, which are building their own lounge businesses.

Catering push

Another new business that Encalm is looking to grow is SkyPlates, its airline catering arm, which began operations in Hyderabad on 1 May and Delhi on 7 May this year. The company took over an existing catering operation in Hyderabad. In Delhi, it is developing new infrastructure to expand and modernise its operations.

The business has facilities in Delhi, and Hyderabad and Bhogapuram in Andhra Pradesh, with stated production capacities of more than 50,000 meals a day in Delhi, 12,500 in Hyderabad and 5,000 in Bhogapuram. It plans to add more facilities, although it has not identified the locations.

India’s airline catering market includes established players such as Tata-owned TajSATS, Skygourmet Catering, LSG Sky Chefs and Oberoi Flight Services. These businesses prepare meals at airport kitchens and supply them to airlines. Encalm’s entry through SkyPlates adds another player to the market, where growth depends on winning airline contracts and expanding kitchen capacity as air traffic rises. In FY25, TajSATS Air Catering reported revenue of about ₹1,100 crore, compared with ₹490 crore for Oberoi Flight Services. The overall in-flight catering market was valued at around ₹5,300 crore that year, according to Mordor Intelligence.

Its motel-style Round D Clock, which has an inventory of under 50 rooms, had its first property launched in February this year near Terminal 3 of Delhi airport. The company plans to expand the format along highways across the country. “We hope to have about 100 such motels along the highways if our capex and investments permit,” he added.

Lounge business remains core, for now

The company currently operates 21 airport lounges: 13 in Delhi, three each in Hyderabad and Goa, and two in Visakhapatnam. It also runs around 16 lounges for airport protocol services and has a growing meet-and-greet business. Around 60% of lounge revenue comes from card-linked access, while airlines contribute about 40%, Sharma said. Direct customers paying to enter lounges account for only around 2% of usage.

Sharma said tighter access restrictions for some credit-card holders in recent months has not materially affected the business, although lower passenger traffic did have an impact. Airline contracts typically use slab-based pricing linked to passenger volumes.

Banks have tightened eligibility for complimentary airport lounge access. In April 2026, HDFC Bank announced that, from 1 July, Regalia Gold cardholders would need to spend at least ₹60,000 in the preceding quarter to qualify for three free domestic lounge visits in the next quarter. Separately, airport operators are changing how passengers access lounges. DreamFolks Services, an intermediary between banks and airport lounges to provide free access to eligible credit-card holders, suspended its domestic lounge services in September 2025 after major operators, including Encalm and Adani-linked entities, ended their arrangements with it.

Varuni Khosla

Varuni Khosla is a journalist with Mint, where she covers the consumer economy with a focus on hospitality and tourism, luxury, the business of sports, art, and the alcohol and food and beverage industries. Based in New Delhi, she reports on how brands and cultural sectors grow, shape consumer demand and compete in one of the world’s fastest-evolving markets.Varuni has been a journalist since 2009 and brings more than 17 years of experience reporting on India’s business landscape. She specialises in covering the industries shaping India’s consumption economy, and is widely recognised as a key voice in these areas.Over the years, she has closely tracked the rise of India’s luxury and hospitality sectors, the transformation of advertising and marketing as brands respond to digital platforms and changing audiences, and the economics of sport, from sponsorships and leagues to the expanding commercial ecosystems around teams, athletes and media rights. Her reporting on the business of art explores the growing global market for South Asian art and the role of collectors, galleries and auction houses.Her stories frequently draw on exclusive conversations with founders, executives and industry leaders, combining market data with on-the-ground reporting to offer readers insight into the companies and trends shaping India’s evolving consumption economy.