Version 1: Encalm runs 21 airport lounges. Now it wants hotels and highway motels

Most lounge visits are paid for by your card, not your wallet. Here is how the lounge business works, and Encalm's ₹5,000 crore plan.

Picture this. Your flight leaves in two hours. You tap a card at the lounge door and walk into a quiet room with soft sofas and a hot buffet. You pay nothing at the counter. So who paid for your plate of food? An interview in Mint on October 12, 2026 gives a clear answer.

For one big lounge company, the answer is mostly the card in your pocket. Encalm Hospitality runs 21 airport lounges in India. Its group CEO, Vikas Sharma, told Mint that around 60% of its lounge revenue comes from card-linked access.

In the same interview, he shared a big plan. Encalm wants to grow beyond lounges into hotels, highway motels and airline food, and become a ₹5,000 crore business in the next five years. Let us break it down.

First, who is Encalm?

Encalm is based in Gurugram. It was founded in 2021 and started work in 2022. It is backed by Gateway Partners, an investor based in Singapore.

It runs 21 airport lounges: 13 in Delhi, three in Hyderabad, three in Goa and two in Visakhapatnam.

Encalm's revenue was about ₹908 crore in FY25, based on filings seen through a data site called Tofler. Revenue means all the money customers pay a company, before any costs are taken out. FY means financial year, which in India runs from April to March. Encalm expects about ₹1,200 crore for FY26.

Right now, airports bring in around 90% of that money. That is a lot of eggs in one basket.

Here is a video tour of one of Encalm's lounges at Delhi airport.

Watch on YouTube

How does a lounge earn money if you pay nothing?

Think of a school canteen that gives you lunch with a coupon. You do not pay at the counter. But the canteen still gets paid, by whoever gave you the coupon.

Lounges work the same way. Your bank card is the coupon. Mint explains that lounge companies depend heavily on payments from banks and airlines.

For Encalm, around 60% of lounge revenue comes from card-linked visits. Airlines pay about 40%. People who walk up and pay at the door make up only around 2% of lounge use. That is about 2 out of every 100 visits.

A bar fills up: about 60 rupees out of 100 from card-linked visits and 40 from airlines, next to a grid of 100 squares where only 2 are paying at the door — Where Encalm's lounge money comes from, in simple numbers.

Airlines usually pay on a slab system. The price changes in steps, depending on how many passengers use the lounge. It is a bit like an electricity bill, where the rate changes once your use crosses certain levels.

Free lounge visits are getting harder

Banks have been making free lounge access tougher. Here is one real example. For the HDFC Bank Regalia Gold credit card, from July 1, 2026, you get three domestic lounge visits a quarter only if you spent ₹60,000 or more in the quarter before.

A quarter is three months. So ₹60,000 in three months means about ₹20,000 a month on the card, just to keep the lounge perk.

Did that hurt Encalm? Sharma told Mint the tighter card rules have not hit the business much. Fewer passengers at airports did have an effect, though.

There was another shake up last year. A company called DreamFolks used to sit in the middle, linking bank cards to lounges. In August 2025, it said three lounge partners, including Encalm, would end their contracts. On September 16, 2025, it stopped its domestic airport lounge services.

Competition is growing too. Airport operators, including Adani Airports, are building their own lounge brands.

The new plan: beds, highways and plane food

Most of Encalm's business today sits at airports run by the GMR Group. So it is spreading out. It is bidding for lounges at airports run by the Airports Authority of India. The first one is expected in Vadodara in the next three to four months.

Hotels. Encalm already runs Transit by Encalm, a 57-room hotel at Hyderabad airport that opened in 2024. Around 80% of its rooms are filled, which is about 8 rooms out of every 10. An average room costs about ₹6,500 a night, and the hotel makes a profit.

Two more five-star airport hotels are expected by the end of 2026: one in Goa under the Radisson Blu brand, and one in Visakhapatnam under Taj Vivanta. Encalm is also looking at land in Delhi and Chennai for big hotels.

Here is how that works. Encalm builds the hotel, then hands it to a famous hotel brand to run. It is like building a shop and letting a well known chai chain run the counter.

Highway motels. Its motel idea is called Round D Clock. The first one opened in February 2026 near Terminal 3 of Delhi airport, with under 50 rooms. Sharma said: "We hope to have about 100 such motels along the highways if our capex and investments permit." Capex is money spent on building big, long lasting things, like a new building.

Plane food. Its airline catering arm, SkyPlates, began in Hyderabad on May 1 and in Delhi on May 7 this year. Its Delhi kitchen can make more than 50,000 meals a day.

Airport restaurants. Under Encalm Eats, it runs IndiSip for Indian street food, Svara for South Indian food and Totally Desi for North Indian food.

Can it really reach ₹5,000 crore?

That is the big question. Here is the goal in Sharma's own words: "We want to become a ₹5,000 crore company and we want to spend the next two years consolidating our existing businesses, making them more efficient, and then increase revenue from there."

Consolidating means tidying up and strengthening what you already have, before you go big. Like a cricket team fixing its fielding before chasing a huge total.

From about ₹908 crore in FY25, ₹5,000 crore would be roughly 5.5 times bigger. That is a big jump.

Three bars grow: about 908 crore rupees in FY25, about 1,200 crore expected in FY26, and a striped bar for the 5,000 crore goal — Encalm's revenue so far, and the goal it has set for the next five years.

Want to understand the lounge business in more detail? This video walks through how lounges in India make money.

Watch on YouTube

The short version

Encalm runs 21 airport lounges, and around 60% of their revenue comes from card-linked visits.
Only about 2 out of every 100 lounge visits are paid for at the door.
It now wants to build hotels, highway motels and airline kitchens.
Its goal is to become a ₹5,000 crore company in the next five years.

As it was first published

Encalm runs 21 airport lounges. Now it wants hotels and highway motels