New Delhi, Sept. 19 -- If India's finest hotels are considered on par with the best in the world, much of the credit must go to Mohan Singh Oberoi, founder of the eponymous chain. Jamsetji Tata built the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay in 1903 as an act of defiance against the city's whites-only hotels. But it was Oberoi, coming to the business a generation later, who first spotted the potential of hoteliering as an industry with a future.

But given his meagre means, seeing the opportunity wasn't enough. It needed audacity too, which he displayed in 1938, when he took a punt on Calcutta's 500-room Grand Hotel, that had lain empty for years after a cholera outbreak killed guests and wrecked its reputation. Oberoi placed everything he had on the...