Chennai-based Mohan Mutha group is all set to building a ‘wellness’ resort in the Vaadhoo island of the Maldives. A notable feature of the $30 million resort is that it will be an all-vegan-vegetarian resort, with no alcohol served, the group’s Executive Director, Suresh Mutha, told businessline.
Muthas are Jains—therefore, vegetarians—from Rajasthan. The Mohan Mutha group has its genesis in 1942, when the founder, Mohanlal Mutha, migrated to Chennai and started a trading business. After the business was split among Mutha and his six brothers, the Mohan Mutha group started an import-export business, which got them close to Maldives.
As a backward integration of the import-export business, the group got into logistics and today owns 15 tug and barges, which are deployed to carry cargo between India and Maldives.
With its close connection with Maldives, getting into the hospitality industry in the Indian ocean archipelago was a natural extension, but there was a problem- Mutha’s religious sentiments would not allow the group to get into the serving of non-vegetarian foods and alcohol.
However, in recent years, with the winds of veganism sweeping across the world, the group saw an opportunity to set up a resort where only vegetarian or vegan foods would be served.
The project is awaiting one final approval from the Maldives authorities; the debt will also be funded by a Maldivian bank, Suresh Mutha said.
Chennai township
Meanwhile, the group is also close to begin work in a ₹230-crore, 40-acre commercial-cum-residential township on the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), near Chennai.
The land has been acquired and debt tied up. As the group awaits approval from the Tamil Nadu government’s Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP), it is also working on the details of the project—such as the number of villas, flats and commercial complexes, Mutha said.
The township will have banqueting facilities—designed with an eye on the growing market for hi-spend weddings.
Mohan Mutha group into four businesses – trading, shipping and logistics, real estate and plant-based foods, like milk of soya, almond, oats and coconut and products like butter and ghee made with these milks. These are sold under the brand name ‘Only Earth’.
The real estate business is under an entity called ‘M20 Urban Space LLP’. The properties it will build will be ‘life-style centric’, Mutha said. (‘M20’ means twenty different ‘M’s, such as Mohan and Mutha, the family’s ancestral home in Rajasthan (Mandavilla), their first place of business, (Madras), Maldives and so on.)
Today the group’s turnover is around ₹1,000 crore. Mutha expects that sales of property at the ECR township will more than double the turnover.