Excepts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Anil Goel:

Q: The net profits are up by 70%, even if it is not strictly comparable because of the several hotels that you have merged into your company. Can this kind of strong growth be maintained in revenues and net profit in FY08? What are the targets you are working at?

A: I would like to believe that the continued robustness will prevail. The standalone performance of 2006-07, before the impact of the three hotels that we merged into IHCL, was itself very robust. So, the growth last year was not just on account of the three hotels we merged.

IHCL’s entire portfolio has performed very well last year and we do believe that the outlook for the new year is quite strong.

Q: Could you give us numbers on the kind of outlook you are looking at? What is the number of rooms you have at this point in time, or as of April 2007? What is the kind of rooms you will end up one year down the line? What kind of revenue growth are you targeting for FY08?

A: We would expect to see five new hotels come into the market from the Taj Portfolio.

We will have our new hotel in Bangalore ITPL, which is housed in Indian Hotels. We will have a new hotel in Chennai in Mount Road, which is housed in Taj GVK and we will have a couple of management contracts that will come into play in Trivandrum and Vizag. Between these three, I would expect 500-600 rooms or more to be offered by the Taj in the market in 2007-08.

Besides inorganic growth, there will be organic growth as well. We do believe that the topline will be a combination of stable occupancies and there will be some improvements in rates across different cities. We also believe that the other businesses as well as other operating incomes will improve. So, we do believe that the outlook for the new year is strong.

Q: Can we assume 40% growth in revenues and 40% operating margins?

A: I will not comment on any specific number but I am just reiterating that we have every reason to believe that the coming year should be strong.

Q: Could you tell us about how the position of the merged entities would be in your growth, going forward, and also about the acquisition of Ritz Carlton?

A: The three hotels that we have merged into IHCL are basically the Fort Aguada Beach Resort or FABR, in Goa; the Taj Exotica, Goa and the Gateway Hotel in Bangalore.

All the three are key properties and will, going forward, offer valuable topline contribution, EBITDA and bottomline directly into IFCL. We have done it essentially as a part of our endeavour to streamline and minimize the layers that currently exist with the way we manage our portfolio.

As far as international acquisitions are concerned, at this point in time, if we look at the entire Taj Group portfolio and the Taj Group turnover, the arithmetical aggregate of the 81 hotels that we run today worldwide, was almost Rs 3,800 crore. Of that, one-third was driven by international hotels.

We would expect contribution by international hotels to topline and EBITDA to strengthen.

The two recent acquisitions have been the Taj Boston, which we took over in January and recently we closed a hotel in San Francisco.

In the short time that we have been managing these properties, we have been able to rebuild the Taj brand in those fiercely competitive markets. We have been able to connect with the customers, to build our relationship with the corporates and with the institutions that typically are customers in those hotels.

Q: What were the ARRs in FY07 and what do you expect FY08 to end with?

A: In FY07, we had occupancy of 73%, up from 70% in the preceding year. We averaged ARRs of about Rs 9,000-10,000 per night and we expect that to improve going forward. But I cannot give a number to that.