Vivek Narain’s Quiet Bet On Member-Only Clubs In India
On work, culture, and building a place people want to return to
On most afternoons, The Quorum in Gurgaon looks calm. There is sunlight spilling across a lounge chair, someone on a laptop in a corner, a business meeting in another. An entrepreneur is nursing his espresso while he’s on a call. There’s another walking to the gym.
However, by the time the sun sets, the room has shifted. The lights have dimmed and the seriousness of the lounge has given way to the clink of glasses. It is a space in motion, changing character through the day, without ever quite losing itself.
That, in essence, is the idea behind The Quorum.
When Vivek Narain and his wife Sonya Jehan opened the first The Quorum in Gurugram in 2018, India did not yet have language for what the space was to become. It wasn’t a gym. It wasn’t a club in the old DLF sense. It wasn’t quite co-working. It was something in between—a “third space,” as Narain would come to call it.
In India’s rapidly urbanising cities, where upward mobility has become the defining narrative of a generation, that gap had begun to ache. “Every time I met people in Delhi, they’d say, ‘We don’t meet anyone new,’” Narain recalls. “And I’d think—wait a minute. They’re here. I see them all the time. I was just putting myself out there.”
He had no grand thesis at the start. “With the benefit of hindsight, I could spin a nice story for you,” he says, smiling. “But at the time, when my wife and I did it, I was at a bit of a crossroads. I think I was unemployable. And I just wanted to do something a little different, with a little bit of scale.”
Narain had done the expected things. A finance and economics degree from American University in Washington, D.C. A career in investment banking. Senior roles in hospitality and real estate, including heading development for Fairmont Raffles Hotels International across South Asia. He helped reposition the SUJAN Rajmahal Palace into one of the world’s most lauded boutique hotels. He understood the luxury space quite well.
What he was learning to be, was an entrepreneur.
The spark came from elsewhere. In the early days of thinking about The Quorum, Narain read The King of Clubs, Bob Dedman’s autobiography about building a vast club business in 1960s America. Dedman’s insight—that a mobile, upwardly ambitious population needs a place to belong—felt uncannily familiar. “In the ’60s, America was a country on the move,” Narain says. “People were moving cities for economic opportunity. They were looking for belonging. I drew a lot of parallels with India. We’re where America was then. We’re still in the first inning of this multi-generational mobility.”
India already had clubs, much as America did in Dedman’s era. But they were built for a settled elite. Clubs like Gymkhana or DLF Golf Club, for instance, are aspirational but inaccessible. What was missing was a space for a new class of Indians—globally minded, culturally curious, professionally restless. “Men and women who are global Indians,” Narain says. “Upwardly mobile. Curious about other ideas. People who want to push boundaries on conversations—from geopolitics to AI; who have an interest in listening to opera or watching a Bharatanatyam performance.”
Quorum would be for them, he said.
From the beginning, Sonya Jehan’s imprint shaped what that would feel like. With a background spanning cinema, restaurants, and design, and a heritage that is part French, part Punjabi, she brought a visual confidence that resisted safety. Rooms that felt residential rather than corporate. “Anyone can throw colour around,” Narain says. “But bringing it together is the hard part. That’s really where my wife is the brainchild.”
There were functional non-negotiables too, Vivek said. The space had to transform. “The same chair is where you put your laptop in the afternoon,” Narain says, “and the same chair is where you’re lounging at night.” Lighting, acoustics, ergonomics—everything was calibrated for that metamorphosis. Even Quorum’s mascot, Django the chameleon, was part of the story from day one. “A chameleon changes its colours through the day,” he says. “It was intentional.”
This refusal to be cookie-cutter became philosophical. “It’s not Hilton-Marriott-Sheraton,” Narain says. “We saw a gap for authentic experiences that are not cookie-cutter, even from a design perspective.”
However, investors were unconvinced. COVID arrived just as The Quorum found its footing. But, Narain went all in with his own money. “That commitment signals something,” he says. “When you’re asking people for a subscription, the question is: Who are you? Will you actually deliver? That credibility gap is real.”
He is not romantic about it. “I’m nine years in and working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life,” he says. “It doesn’t get easier. The good thing is, I enjoy what I do.”
The Quorum Mumbai opened its doors in 2021. Meanwhile, the Quorum launched in Hyderabad in early 2024.
The Quorum’s calendar now reads like a cultural almanac: jazz nights and qawwali, opera and meditation, conversations with Indira Jaising and D. Subbarao, whisky tastings, sustainability panels, Halloween parties, live readings by Naseeruddin Shah. Across Gurugram, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, nearly 90 events unfold every month.
“It’s mad,” Narain says.
It also terrifies him. “I still get nervous. I hate attending our events.” He laughs. “My stomach churns before every event. Will people come or not? I get so nervous that I stopped attending. When the event starts, I leave the room.”
Not everything lands. Some rooms are full. Some barely hold a handful. “It doesn’t deter me,” he says.
Hyderabad, completed and then partially rebuilt, has become his emotional anchor. “If you ever come to Hyderabad, you must come,” he says. “We’re very proud of what we built there. That one is my personal favourite. It’s so gorgeous. We got that little bit of layering right.”
Each city behaves differently. “Sufi and qawwali do well in some places. Bollywood works better in Gurgaon. Indie and jazz in Bombay. Hyderabad leans more EDM,” he says. “These things are cultural. The cool, creative people in each city drive it. I’m too old now, I just listen to them.”
Beneath the romance sits a rigorous business mind. Narain resists the idea that India is price-sensitive. “India is value-conscious, not price-conscious,” he says. “If you build something that feels paisa vasool, people get it.” Quorum refused subsidised food—a heresy in club culture. “Judge me for the quality of what I give you, not the price,” he told his team. “Globally, 53 percent of people return for ambience. Over 30 percent for food quality. Only 17 percent for value. Focus on the 83, not the 17.”
Growth has been deliberate. Today, The Quorum and its sister brand District 150 operate just under 250,000 square feet of lifestyle space. “Soho House took 12 to 14 years to build their first three clubs,” Narain says. “We’ve done it in seven or eight. Almost half the time.”
He travels 24 days a month, and lives in Goa now. “I can’t live in the city anymore,” he says. Bangalore is coming. So is Goa, Delhi, maybe Pune. “What we did in seven or eight years, we’ll do again in three or four.”
Talking about funding, Vivek admits that although The Quorum has been bootstrapped till now, they’re finally looking for funding.
“People are saying, ‘This is a business I don’t mind betting my career on.’ You don’t just build credibility with your clients, you build it with your people,” he says.
For what’s next, Narain says they are focusing on two big areas.
“One is stays. I want the Quorum hotel room to be one of the nicest rooms you stay in.”
The second is longevity. Wellness becomes foundational. “Food and Beverage becomes Food and Wellness. F&B becomes F&W,” he says. “People are drinking less. They’re mindful. There’s a whole new wave of scientific protocols around preventive health. If we’re building a lifestyle hospitality platform, we have to own that pillar.”
Narain is wary of closure. He doesn’t speak in milestones or victories. He speaks in adjustments. In tweaks. In what still isn’t right. “I haven’t got it perfect yet,” he says, plainly. “There are places we didn’t do a good enough job. We had to rebuild. I’m still learning how to do this.”