Rajiv Mehta
Chief Investment Officer
Strategy, capital, and lender relationships
Our Story
An operator first.An owner since.
We acquire underperforming operating assets,reposition them through capital investment,and run them directly — across hospitality,education, and residential real estate.
Leadership
An operator before an owner —and an owner who neverstopped operating.
Sanjay Patel
Chief Executive Officer & President
Arrival
Sanjay Patel arrived in the United States from India in 1996 with ten dollars and no capital behind him. What he had instead was a willingness to learn the business from its floor, on the conviction that a hotel is only ever understood by the people who run it.
The floor
He began at a small Tampa hotel owned by an uncle, taking the controls whenever his uncle was away. From there he moved to an independent property as a night auditor, and made a point of learning every function in the building — housekeeping, front desk, maintenance, the ledger. Within three years he was general manager of a larger hotel in southwest Florida, working sixteen-hour days for three years without taking a day off.
The owner's mindset
He ran the business like an owner years before he became one. Every unsold room registered as a personal loss; every dollar of revenue was treated as his own. That discipline is the origin of the company's operating philosophy — that ownership is a way of thinking about an asset, not merely a line on a title.
First ownership
In 2001 a physician connected to his employer needed an experienced operator for a property in Pinellas Park, Florida. Patel had no money to contribute, so he contributed expertise instead, negotiating a partnership stake in place of capital. In the first year, revenue rose from $250,000 to $650,000, occupancy reached roughly 95 percent, and he repaid his share of the loan. The property was run by family members and two housekeeping employees. Two things made that possible: he knew every function in the building well enough to run the operation from the inside, and he had spent years treating revenue as his own before any of it was — which is what let a property run that lean without a guest noticing.
The group
That first success became Brahmas Management and Investment Group. The portfolio has grown to a diversified set of operating assets across hospitality, education, and residential real estate — the majority midscale hotels operating under established franchise systems. As the group's record with lenders lengthened, banks began approaching it directly to take on distressed and bankrupt properties during downturns.
How we hire
The company recruits for disposition rather than credentials. Employees who show genuine ownership instinct are trained against nearly three decades of operating knowledge, and the strongest performers are offered equity stakes in new projects — the same path that turned an operator into an owner.
In his words
“Every dollar that was coming in, I acted as if it was coming in for me as an owner.”
Our Approach
We do not hand the keysto a third party.
Acquisition, repositioning, and operation situnder one roof. The group underwrites theasset, deploys the capital, and then runs thebuilding — so the people making the investmentcase are accountable for the result.12
Operating assets
03
Asset classes
27+
Years in the industry
2001
First ownership
The Team
People who runwhat they underwrite.
The group hires for disposition rather thancredentials, and offers equity in new projectsto those who prove it.
Vikram Shah
Director of Acquisitions
Underwriting, diligence, and market selection
Neil Kapoor
Director of Asset Management
Capital improvement and brand standards
Ananya Rao
Head of Hospitality Operations
Brahmas Hospitality Management
Meera Iyer
Admin
Records, scheduling, and day-to-day office coordination
Priya Nair
Head of Development
Ground-up development and major repositioning
Construction partners
Brahmas works with Heal Construct, adesign-build and interior practice, as apreferred construction partner onrepositioning work.
Design
Build
BIM