OT Interview: Soho House's Dominique Bellas On India Expansion

We have been in India for five years and have learned so much from our members and the House in Mumbai. Many of our members based in Mumbai have strong connections in cities such as Delhi, Jaipur, and Hyderabad, and over the years, we've organised a few events in these cities for our members, so this is the natural next step. We will launch our "Cities Without Houses" (CWH) membership in Bengaluru, New Delhi, Kolkata, Goa, Hyderabad and Jaipur for creatives who travel and want to use our Houses. We are also opening two future Houses—one in New Delhi and the other in South Mumbai.

As with all our cities, we listen to and learn from the members within them. Our job is to get to know each city and understand how members live, work, and play so we can tailor our events, communication, design, and facilities offerings to ensure we are in sync with the market.

We will look to create unique experiences around vital cultural moments in those cities, such as the Jaipur Literature Festival, the India Art Fair, etc. We will also create standalone programming that could include events such as dinners and parties, panel discussions, weekenders, retreats, and more.

CWH membership is designed for members who travel both domestically and internationally. So, what could your membership look like? For example, you could be a creative based in New Delhi. When you travel to Paris, London, Mexico City, and LA, you have a home away from home in all those cities to stay in, take meetings and work from, have fun in, and connect with other creatives. Equally, when you travel to one of our 80 CWH locations, you could join our events in Milan during Salone Del Mobile, in Dubai during the art week, or across India in one of our new locations.

As with everything we do, it's always curated by our members, for our members. So, for our events and experiences, we will collaborate with local Indian designers, artists, musicians and chefs to curate our calendar of events. For our properties, while our design is done in-house, we are inspired by the building that will become our House. Also, we always work with local artisans to bring our design to life. All of the art featured in our Houses is specifically curated, so when we open in New Delhi and South Mumbai—we will be curating art from local emerging and established Indian artists from each city.

We are committed to making change and looking at social responsibility and sustainability together—we want to use our platform at Soho House to positively impact our members, teams, and the communities around us. In 2018, we started removing single-use plastics from our Houses. In 2020, we launched House Foundations—our ESG (environmental, social and governance) programme that supports global business in social impact and climate action (reducing our carbon emissions), reducing waste, chemical, water and plastic and ensuring we source ethically.

As we have done in Soho House Mumbai, our food and drinks offerings balance local and global. There will always be a selection of House favourites that appear on menus in all Soho Houses worldwide—those are tweaked based on local ingredients. Then, we will always have local food and drink on the menu to ensure we are drawing on the cuisine around us and catering to our members. We are also passionate about supporting local drink brands and suppliers to ensure we provide opportunities to businesses in the city we are in.