Ritwik Khare, Founder & CEO, ELIVAAS, speaks to Hospemag about widening the brand from villas into farm stays, resorts and retreats, keeping 700+ properties consistent without standardising the soul out of them, the thinking behind the rebrand, corporate offsites, Dubai as the first international market, and what the Rs 87 Cr raise from Vertex, Surge and 3one4 has unlocked.

ELIVAAS started as a villa company. Farm stays, resorts, retreats, experiential stays - was the widening deliberate from the start, or did owners pull you there?

The intent was there from day one. We never set out to offer conventional stays. The focus was always on anything experiential and private, never just a room.
Villas and farmhouses were the first step. They were the first container for that idea, not the limit of it.
Experiential was part of the offer from the start. Guests were buying a feeling of place, not just a place to sleep.
Demand kept pulling us wider. Guests and owners both asked for more, and we kept widening the portfolio to meet it.
Owners accelerated it. They brought farms, orchards and land, which was supply that already had a story.
So the widening was deliberate in thesis and opportunistic in sequence. The direction was ours, and demand set the pace.

Raha Farms, Aanandam, and Energise Soul Retreat represent three very different formats. What defines an ELIVAAS property now that the brand’s portfolio has expanded across diverse formats?

Raha Farms, Aanandam and Energise Soul Retreat look very different on paper, but each offers something beyond a room, and that is what ties them together. Whether it's a resort, a farm stay, a villa or an apartment, three things define an ELIVAAS property. The first is the experience: every stay is built around curated moments, not just a place to sleep, and that holds across all three properties. The second is our guest-first approach, which shapes every decision from arrival to departure. The third is standardisation: the same service standards and quality benchmarks apply across every property, so a guest knows what to expect wherever they stay. The format changes from property to property, but these three stay constant.

What breaks operationally when you move from standalone villas to running a resort or a retreat?

Nothing breaks. The scale and format change, but the operating model doesn't, because it was never built around one property type. ELIVAAS runs on SOPs and a technology-driven backbone, and that is what gives us consistency across every property. A resort has more moving parts than a villa, such as shifts, F&B, shared spaces and front-desk coverage, but each of those runs on the same defined processes and the same tech. So the guest gets the same standard of service whether they stay in a villa, a farm stay, a resort or a retreat.

What's the format you've deliberately said no to, and why?

We've always been a brand built around non-conventional stays, and that focus hasn't changed. So the "no" is less about one format and more about a discipline in what we take on. We say no to micro-markets where we can't see ourselves building a cluster of 10-15 properties over time, because a single isolated property is hard to operate well and hard to build a destination story around. We also say no to properties that don't serve our target audience or meet the star-rating standard our guests expect. Staying selective on location and quality is how we protect the brand as we widen the portfolio.

What does 700 properties teach you that 70 didn't? What had to be unlearned?

Conventional stays follow one repeatable model. Our properties don't, because each one is different, and that is the point. At 70, you can manage that difference by hand. At 700, you can't, so we had to learn to standardise without erasing what makes each place unique. We added a layer of standardisation and technology: our app carries 32 checkpoints that hold every property to the same standard, and SOPs apply across the portfolio. Uniqueness is protected by leaving the real estate itself untouched, so the character and soul of each property stays intact while the service layer stays consistent. What we had to unlearn was the idea that consistency and individuality pull in opposite directions.

How do you keep consistency across 700+ properties without standardising the soul out of them?

As stated above, we standardise the service layer and leave the property itself alone. Every property follows the same SOPs, and our app carries 32 checkpoints that hold each one to the same standard, so a guest knows what to expect wherever they stay. The real estate is never touched: we don't redesign or homogenise the spaces, so the character of each villa, farm or retreat stays intact. Technology and SOPs give us consistency, and the untouched property gives us the soul.

You rebranded mid-growth. What was the moment you knew the old identity wouldn't carry the next phase?

The trigger was evidence, not instinct.

We surveyed around 100 people to test how the brand was being understood.
The finding was clear: what we were offering wasn't reaching the audience.

The gap was category perception.

Guests were seeking hotels for services. They didn't book villa stays because they assumed these were just a stay, with no services around them.
We were being read as just a luxury brand. In reality, we're a luxury staycation brand with a growing layer of experiences.
The old identity described the property but not what the guest actually receives.

So the job became category creation.

We weren't repositioning within an existing category. We were building a new one: a private stay that comes with hotel-grade service and curated experiences.
The brand had to show that a villa or farmhouse with us is not just a stay.

The insight that followed:

The guest's real need is simple: arrive, and everything else is handled.
The brand's job was to communicate that ease and take away the effort of planning.

The result is the tagline.

You've arrived. We'll take it from here.
It states the promise in the guest's own terms. Getting there is the guest's job. Everything after is ours.

Why it mattered for the next phase:

As formats widened into farm stays, retreats and experiential stays, a "luxury villas" label would have kept shrinking the story.
A promise built on how the stay feels carries every format under one identity.

The outcome:

Once guests understood there was more to the stay, revenue from experiences increased significantly.

What changed internally - how the team thinks, not just how it looks?

Our guest-first principle hasn't changed; it remains the core of how we operate. What changed is how the team perceives the brand and how we tell its story. Our pitch moved from selling villas and staycations to selling experiences, and that shift runs across marketing, operations and sales alike. Every team now sells stories, not just stays, while the guest-first approach stays constant underneath.

What's the biggest objection you hear from owners before they sign, and how do you answer it?

Owners don't come with a fear as such. Often they don't live in the same city as their second home, so their main concern is simple: will it be maintained and looked after properly while they're away? We answer that with visibility and a named point of contact. Owners get regular updates through the app and a newsletter, so they can see how the property is doing without being there. They also have dedicated people to speak to, who address their concerns on an ongoing basis. The idea is that an owner can be in another city and still feel in touch with their home.

Corporate offsites are a very different buyer from leisure guests. What did you have to build that you didn't have before?

Companies today are bored of conventional offsites and want something more experiential. They also want to celebrate and work in private, and to leave with something to take away from the offsite, not just a few days away. We built a layer for that. Our real estate is experiential by nature, and we added a dedicated corporate team that goes out of its way to source experiences and create personalised games and parties around each group. The result is an offsite designed for the team, not a standard package.

Is MICE a core pillar now, or useful filler between weekends?

MICE is a new category for us, and we're still in its early stages. Right now it helps with occupancy, particularly on the midweek days when leisure demand is softer. For now we mostly cater to small-group offsites, often called micro-MICE: smaller teams that want a private, experiential setting and not a large conference format. It's too early to call it a core pillar, but it's a segment we're building with intent and not treating as filler.

What does the guest come for, and what do they leave with?

Come for: rest, reset, permission to disconnect.
Leave with: a story, memories or rhythm they carry home.

What made Dubai the right first market over Southeast Asia or Europe?

Dubai is a mature market for alternative accommodation, which makes it a proven place to launch. It is also a travel capital, where people travel for both business and leisure, so demand isn't limited to one season or one kind of guest. Indian buyers have a strong connection to the city, too, people bought about $96 million of real estate there in the last three years. And it sits within a short flight of India, like the other markets we're targeting, so proximity and familiarity lower the cost of learning. Southeast Asia is part of the plan as well. It isn't a question of if, but when.

Rs 87 Cr from Vertex, Surge and 3one4 - what did that capital unlock that you couldn't have done bootstrapped?

The capital let us do three things at once, which bootstrapping would have forced us to do one at a time. First, it deepened our domestic penetration and took us into multiple markets in parallel. Second, it funded investment in technology, which is what lets us scale without losing consistency. Third, it helped us build the right talent across functions, which is hard to do ahead of demand without outside capital. Together, these let us build the foundations for the next phase of growth, not just add more properties.

Name the one metric you'd want to be judged on three years from now.

Repeat guest rate. It is the clearest measure of customer experience, because a guest only returns if the stay delivered what we promised. It also captures brand trust and the pull of the portfolio, and it leads to something money can't buy: organic brand love. Acquisition can be bought, but repeat can't. If guests keep coming back and recommending us without being prompted, we know the experience, the standards and the brand are all working.

What's the thing everyone in alternative accommodation is getting wrong right now?