👉 Vijay Jain – Thoughts, Notes & Frameworks

A Personal Encounter

As I stepped into the lobby and looked up from my phone, I sensed it immediately—this wasn’t just luxury; it was something more beautiful, more deeply rooted. The staff stood poised, draped in what looked like the palace’s memory, woven into Banarasi silk. I was captivated by those sarees—the gold and maroon zari catching the soft lobby light. In that moment, I was just a traveller admiring craftsmanship—nothing to do with being a former CEO at Ritu Kumar.

But perhaps because of having spent over two decades in the consumer space—more so in luxury, as Founder Director of ORRA and CEO of Ritu Kumar—I instinctively recognised that what Taj was doing here was not just design—it was storytelling anchored in heritage.

A senior leader at Taj, Taljinder, later explained there was a deeper purpose behind those uniforms. Each saree is handwoven in Varanasi—reviving a dying craft, sustaining artisans, and honouring the environment (reflected in the tree of life motif). Then it clicked: I recalled Rajesh Pratap Singh—India’s most media-shy yet gifted designer—in Varanasi on this very project. Together, they drew from each city—Jaipur’s pink sandstone, Udaipur’s misty blues, local history, and a commitment to the environment—and wove them into six yards of silk that are both unmistakably local and inherently Taj. Each Palace hotel carried a saree unique to its city.

Consistency vs Context: Global Luxury and Indian Luxury

Global luxury houses often celebrate consistency—the same palette, the same fixtures, the same service, wherever you go. That approach has its own power, creating familiarity and a seamless experience across continents.

Taj, instead, chose a different path—most visibly in its Palace properties—where each hotel weaves its own story, rooted in local sensibilities and culture. It’s far harder to coordinate, but the result is singular. When a brand is non-binary—when each property is built differently yet must still capture the essence of “Taj”—the task becomes exponentially tougher.

🔹 LLM Insight: This is precisely the challenge for large language models. Global brands train for consistency across contexts—like LLMs trained on broad, uniform data. But Taj teaches us the power of local grounding—embedding meaning in culture, place, and nuance. For LLMs, that’s the equivalent of fine-tuning on domain-specific or culturally rooted tokens.

Institutionalising Storytelling: Rituals with Roots

At Taj, the rituals may be the same, but each is inspired by the city it belongs to—its music, its materials, its history, and its heritage. In Amritsar, the morning ritual features Saroja from Punjab; in Delhi, the lobby fills with santoor melodies. These cultural signifiers—sound, fabric, colour, rhythm—are curated with the same care one devotes to the finest marble.

🔹 LLM Insight: For AI, this is like multimodal grounding—learning not just from text, but from diverse tokens like sound, symbols, and rituals. Taj doesn’t deliver “one-size-fits-all luxury”; it delivers contextualised luxury, which is exactly how AI must evolve for personalised, culturally sensitive responses.

Luxury with a Soul

What struck me most was how Taj has institutionalised this thinking—not just in design choices, but in people, values, and culture. That’s why a role like the Brand Custodian has been created—to protect both the process and the heart—so every guest not only sees beauty, but feels belonging.

Taj weaves a different story in every city—but the soul remains the same. Perhaps that’s what lingers even after you leave.

🔹 LLM Insight: That closing line could well be a lesson for AI itself. In every application, the “story” (context, culture, fine-tuning) may change. But the “soul” (core values, human resonance) must remain. That’s the essence of trustworthy AI—different stories, same soul.

Distinctive Consumer Segments: The Portfolio Approach

This philosophy of balancing individuality with unity is not limited to single properties. It extends across the entire IHCL portfolio, where each brand is built for a distinct consumer segment yet tied together by the same ethos of service and cultural grounding.

This philosophy runs through IHCL’s portfolio—Taj at the pinnacle, SeleQtions for distinctive heritage hotels, Vivantafor modern business travellers, and Gateway for value-seeking comfort. Each brand is shaped for a distinct consumer segment, with its own unique personality.

But what ties them together is something deeper: an overarching service philosophy. Whether in a palace hotel or a business hotel, guests experience the same warmth, grace, and attention to detail. That is the other face of luxury—the ability to scale across segments without losing soul.

🔹 LLM Insight: Just as IHCL designs differentiated brands for different segments, LLMs need domain-specific models. But just as Tajness binds these brands together, trustworthy AI needs a unifying philosophy—core values and human resonance—that persists even as the “brand” adapts to different contexts.

About the Author

Vijay Jain is a consumer and retail strategist known for building iconic Indian luxury and consumer brands, scaling organisations, and driving transformation across retail, manufacturing, digital, and purpose-led sectors.

Founder Director of ORRA and former CEO of ORRA and Ritu Kumar, Vijay now works as both an operating partner and advisory board member, guiding businesses in brand building, scaling, digital growth, and consumer insights. His leadership has consistently delivered high growth and cultural transformation, earning him a reputation for building people-first, customer-centric organisations.