It was learning to make do on a limited student budget in New York that gave Ashish Dev Kapur and his wife Meghana, now 43, the chutzpah to move back to India from North America and start a casual Asian eatery in the MGF Metropolitan Gurugram.
The year was 2003, a year after the couple had returned to Delhi and subsequently gotten married; the eatery was Yo China!, which went on to become one of the first domestic QSR brands with a pan-India presence, boasting franchise outlets in 19 cities.
“We met as students in Montreal, where I was studying engineering and she was studying graphic design. We dated for around five years, before we decided to come back home, get married, and go into the restaurant business,” recalls Ashish. In the beginning, at that first outlet, Ashish was “back of the house,” while Meghana was out in front, dealing with the customers.
That formula seems to have served them well. Today, the couple (having moved on from QSRs like Yo China and its successor, Dimsum Bros, to the fine-dining segment) run Moods Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, own Kimono in Delhi, Whisky Samba and The Wine Company in Gurugram, The Wine Rack in Mumbai, and Antares in Goa, the last of which they opened with MasterChef Australia’s Sarah Todd.
While Ashish takes care of finances, logistics, and all the minutiae of running a business, Meghana takes care of the “human factor, building and maintaining relationships with guests, staff, and vendors.”Ashish says this setting works because “while we have different personalities and strengths, we were brought up with the same value system, and both come from the same military and civil services background, which keeps us grounded.”
This sense of service seems to have culminated with their latest project, which is spearheaded by Meghana, and looks for high-tech solutions to the post-Covid reality.
Working with an Israeli health tech company, the couple have introduced CPD, a nano-technology-based spray, which provides continuous disinfection for 12 hours at POS (Points of Sales) counters of stores, mall outlets, hospitals and other places of monetary exchange.
“It’s been two months and we have already got tie-ups with entities as diverse as the luxury brands at DLF Emporio to NITI Aayog to corporate houses. We began in Delhi, are now present in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and in talks with companies, in these and other countries,” elaborates Meghana.
And that, of course, brings the conversation around to Covid.
“The world has obviously changed, and we’ll change with it. Just like, after 9/11, we got used to metal detectors and security everywhere, this pandemic will definitely make us more conscious of where we go and what we do,” says Ashish, adding,
“That doesn’t mean we can shut ourselves off from living either.” Towards that end, Kimono has already been open for over a month, with plans for Whisky Samba and Wine Company to open in the coming week. Antares will be the last to up its shutters, in November.
“While this has obviously been professionally debilitating, it’s also given us a lot of time with our sons, aged 15 and 10. We have been spending time together at home, and Ashish has become quite the chef after cooking for us so much,” laughs Meghana, concluding, “Whatever else, we got a much-needed reset, so we are ready for what comes next.