For Ramesh Ramanathan, it’s been some homecoming to Sterling Holidays. In his second stint at the resorts firm, this time back as its MD since July 2011, Ramanathan, a veteran of the time share sector, sees the hard toil of the past two years bear fruit.
If anybody could have put Sterling back on the rails from the doldrums it was in, it was Ramanathan. Very few know the time share industry as well as he does.
“I had to put the energy back in the company, put together a new team, reassure existing members that we were back and refurbish all the resorts,” he says.
What Sterling had going for it was a large number of rooms, 1,300, when Ramanathan rejoined Sterling. But, occupancy was barely 20 per cent, he recalls. Rooms had become tatty, resorts run down and all the goodwill that Sterling had got as the time share industry pioneer had run out — most of that went to Mahindra Holiday Resorts, of which Ramanathan himself was the founding MD.
All the fresh funds that came into Sterling via investments from Bay Capital, and from Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and R Damani, was parlayed into refurbishing existing resorts and, despite “my being a marketing man, we didn't spend on advertising at all,” he says.
The company opened new resorts by leasing new property. “We had to show members we were serious and give them more holiday options,” Ramanathan says.
Of the 1,520 rooms Sterling has now, 1,100 are its own, and half of them have been overhauled. The rest, he says, will be done in the next 18 months. The investment from Thomas Cook will be used to develop new resorts and clear debt.
True calling Fifty-seven-year old Ramanathan, an economics graduate from Madras Christian College and an MBA from IIM-Calcutta, its third batch in 1977, transitioned through several jobs but time share was his true calling.
Part of the founding team of Sterling Resorts along with promoter R Subramaniam and a couple of others, Ramanathan quit to start the time share resorts business for Mahindra & Mahindra in the mid 1990s.
After four-and-a-half years, he suddenly quit to join Sify as President in the heyday of the internet boom. But, he quit that as well to join the RPG Group for a little over two years. Returning to Chennai, he joined Foodworld as President. The M&M group got him back as the MD of Mahindra Holidays and he spent eight years with it before the Sterling opportunity came up. This time, Sterling promoter Subramaniam's son, Siddharth Shanker, roped him in.
With a 2.86 per cent stake in the company, which will soon roll over to Thomas Cook shares, Ramanathan, an avid bird watcher and art collector, will say it’s been time well spent in turning Sterling around.