Latest news with #NorthernIndia
BBC News
a day ago
- General
- BBC News
BBC Learning English - Learning English from the News / Kumbh Mela: 400 million to attend world's largest festival
(Photo by Ritesh Shukla/ Getty Images) ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ The story The Kumbh Mela festival, the largest religious gathering in the world, has begun in the northern Indian city of Prayagraj. 400 million people are expected to attend throughout the 45-day period, authorities say. The festival can be seen from space. The Hindu festival is held once every 12 years, but this year it's particularly significant because of a rare alignment between the Sun, the Moon and Jupiter, which happens only once every 144 years. News headlines India's Maha Kumbh Mela festival gets under way for first time in 144 years The Guardian India's Maha Kumbh festival sees 15 million people take holy dip on first day Reuters Kumbh Mela, explained: Its mythology, history, astrology, and why millions flock to it The Indian Express Key words and phrases under way in progress You can't enter the venue once the concert is under way. dip a brief swim After hiking all day, a quick dip in the lake felt amazing. flock move in a crowd Tourists flock to the city every summer. Next Learn more English vocabulary from the news with our News Review archive.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Lemon Tree Hotels Ltd (BOM:541233) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Highlights: Record Revenue and ...
Release Date: May 30, 2025 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Lemon Tree Hotels Ltd (BOM:541233) recorded its highest ever fourth-quarter revenue at INR 379.4 crores, marking a 15% year-on-year growth. The company's net EBITDA grew by 17% year-on-year to INR 205 crores, translating into a net EBITDA margin of 54%, an increase of 109 basis points. The total revenue for the year stood at INR 1,288 crores, a 20% increase over the previous fiscal year. The company's profit after tax increased by 29% year-on-year to INR 108.1 crores in Q4. The debt of the company decreased by about INR 190 crores during the year, improving the debt-to-EBITDA ratio by 25%. The retail average room rate (ARR) in some locations, like Oria Mumbai, remains below expectations, impacting potential revenue growth. Renovation expenses increased to 2.7% of revenue, which is expected to continue into the next year, affecting short-term profitability. The occupancy rate, while improved, still requires strategic pricing adjustments to maximize revenue, especially in high-demand periods. The expansion of managed and franchise contracts is slower than anticipated, with delays attributed to third-party owners. Geopolitical developments and COVID-19 impacts have led to a significant revenue growth slowdown in certain regions, such as Northern India. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with BOM:524332. Q: Can you provide an update on the developments at Oria Mumbai, particularly regarding the ARR and future pricing expectations? A: The retail pricing at Oria Mumbai varies significantly, and while current spot checks show lower rates, we expect the ARR to increase significantly during the high season. The focus has been on filling the hotel, and with occupancy now over 80%, we are confident that the ARR will reach the 11,000 to 12,000 range in the upcoming winter season. (Respondent: Chairman and Managing Director) Q: What steps are being taken to increase the retail share from 45% to 65%, and how will this impact the income statement? A: The increase in retail share is expected due to rising demand from individual travelers. We are enhancing our loyalty program and website to capture more direct bookings, which will reduce costs and increase margins. We anticipate achieving the 65% retail target within three years. (Respondent: Chairman and Managing Director) Q: With renovation costs expected to decrease by FY28, what is the projected EBITDA margin for that year? A: We expect the EBITDA margin to reach at least 55% by FY28, up from the current 50%. This is due to reduced renovation expenses and increased revenue growth. (Respondent: Chairman and Managing Director) Q: Can you explain the strategy behind the limited expansion in the upscale Lemon Tree Premier segment? A: Our strategy focuses on expanding into tier 2 and tier 3 cities, which typically support mid-market hotels rather than upscale ones. This network expansion aims to increase brand presence and drive demand across our portfolio. (Respondent: Chairman and Managing Director) Q: What is the status of the renovation projects, and how many rooms are expected to be renovated in the coming years? A: We have completed about 70% of the renovations, focusing on high-value hotels and Keys properties. We plan to renovate another 30% this year, with the remaining minor refurbishments continuing into the next year. (Respondent: Chairman and Managing Director) For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
The National
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Ishaan Khatter on Homebound, Cannes and Martin Scorsese: 'I don't want this dream to end'
On the 6th floor rooftop terrace of the Cannes Film Festival's famous Palais, it's blowing a gale. 'We almost flew off,' laughs Ishaan Khatter, 29, the Mumbai-born Bollywood star, who is managing to keep his cool on this particularly blustery day. Famed for his role in Netflix Hindi-language TV series The Royals and The Perfect Couple, the actor is as dashing as you might expect. But today, he's in Cannes to show very different side to him. Screening in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, Homebound is a nuanced tale of friendship. Already gaining acclaim from its early reviews, Homebound is another impressive entry in the recent renaissance of Indian cinema. After last year's Cannes Grand Jury prize-winner, Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light, the movie industry from the subcontinent is experiencing its own wind of change. 'It's a beautiful time,' Khatter tells The National. 'I think this global spotlight on Indian cinema…it's brighter than it's ever been before. Because we're seeing such diverse work.' Neeraj Ghaywan, the writer-director of Homebound, concurs, paying full tribute to Kapadia. 'She broke the glass ceiling for all of us. She's the hero that we all need.' Ghaywan is also no stranger to Cannes, his 2015 debut Masaan similarly playing in Un Certain Regard. 'Honestly speaking, just returning to Cannes was the thing, where it all started for me. This was my homecoming journey, in a way.' Set in a village in Northern India, Homebound follows best friends Shoaib (Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa), who both apply to be police constables, with the hope that such an esteemed public role will render them immune to caste or religious discrimination. The statistics, however (very real, according to Ghaywan), count against them. There are 714 applicants for every position available. It's a chase for work that will eventually come between them. 'I was really struck by the way that Neeraj was able to weave all these things into the story,' says Khatter. 'It's a very rare kind of film. I don't think many actors get the opportunity to play something quite like this. "As a character, I thought Shoaib was deeply complex, beautiful and human. I thought that there was a persistence to this character, despite all odds, that almost made him feel like an optimist in the beginning. When you start seeing the cracks, you start seeing him getting beaten down by those societal, systemic pressures, and your heart really breaks for him and for their friendship.' Ghaywan says the film came loosely inspired by a real-life story in The New York Times. 'When we speak about people of colour, like any ethnic and religious minorities, sexual minorities, even migrants, we're always calling them as a statistic,' he explains. 'We're never asked to humanise them. "What if we actually pick up these two migrants and see where they came from? What did they love? What was the friendship? What was the family? What were their homes like? What were their dreams? What did they leave behind? What did it take for them to reach this point? Maybe then we will have empathy and we'll see humanity in the whole situation.' Intriguingly, the film is produced by Karan Johar, the hugely successful Indian producer whose company Dharma Productions is behind some of the biggest Bollywood movies. 'Karan and I formed this bonhomie, because he also a person who has deep empathy, and he gets moved by things, and he loved Masaan,' says Ghaywan. 'And he said, 'I just want to do something with you. Can we collaborate on one film?' I said, 'Of course.'' That Johar was also willing to give him artistic freedom ('no meddling') was a dream. 'Imagine you get studio money to make an independent film,' the director marvels. Even better, Homebound is also executive produced by Martin Scorsese. Like Johar, the acclaimed director behind Goodfellas and Raging Bull was also a fan of Masaan. This time, after Ghawyan's team approached him, he got more involved, giving feedback on the script and watching several cuts of the film. 'I'm literally living the dream of every independent filmmaker,' Ghaywan tells me. So how did Khatter feel, knowing that Scorsese was sitting in his screening room watching his work? 'It was absolutely surreal,' he replies. 'He's the North Star in the world of cinema, and even from whatever I'm privy to of his notes and the kind of influence that he has had on this film, it's just such a masterful gaze. Somebody that doesn't come from a removed or outside perspective, but comes from deeply educated perspective. It's a dream, and I don't want this dream to end.' For Khatter, he feels a film like Homebound also brings him back to his roots, when he made 2017's Beyond the Clouds with the Iranian auteur Majid Majidi, playing a street hustler and drug dealer in Mumbai. 'That was an extremely rooted, grounded film and I would say that socially, I was playing a character that was from a similar section of society. And I could find a lot of parallels in the process that I undertook with Neeraj.' Shooting Homebound in Madhya Pradesh, in Bhopal, Khatter and his co-star Vishal Jethwa enjoyed what Ghaywan calls 'a massive immersion exercise', in which they met and mixed with locals. 'Neeraj made it very clear that we can't take for granted that we will understand these characters,' says Khatter. 'So there was a lot of research. We would sit down with people and try and get a sense of the lives that they have, the struggles that they have, the daily obstacles that they have to deal with.' The results are there for all to see, with Ghaywan suggesting he wanted to stay true to his cinema-verite roots. 'You can't wing it. That feels dishonest,' he states. It's why Khatter couldn't even devote time, as much as he wanted to, to signing autographs for the crowds that would gather. 'I wanted to stay as immersed as I possibly could. So while I wasn't rude…it was a smile and wave and then go to work,' he says. Whatever the case, his fans are going to be astonished when they see him in Homebound.
Bloomberg
23-05-2025
- Bloomberg
India Is Gripped by a Spiritual Tourism Boom as Faith Becomes Fashionable
On a hot April evening in India's northern city of Varanasi, hundreds of tourists hurry along the banks of the river Ganges, tussling for prime spots to observe an ancient Hindu ritual of prayer to the goddess Ganga. They push their way past haggling boatmen offering rides, street vendors selling talismans and pilgrims immersing themselves in the sacred river to wash away their sins. After sunset, seven priests in saffron-colored robes stand on the famous riverside steps known as the Dashashwamedh Ghat, ringing hand bells, lighting incense and waving oil lamps in the 45-minute ceremony of lights. Latecomers watch on a giant screen some 50 meters (164 feet) away, as Vedic chants blare out from loudspeakers.
Khaleej Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Cannes Film Festival 2025: Scorsese-backed Indian film packs emotional punch
On paper Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound —which premiered Wednesday at the Cannes film festival—looks like a typical Bollywood tearjerker. Two best friends who grew up together in a poor village leave to take on the world, their friendship and mettle tested at every turn. But this is no average buddy movie. The moving epic set in northern India around pandemic lockdowns is so much more than that because one of the boys is a Muslim and the other a low-caste Hindu. Their unbreakable bond, forged in adversity, is the beating heart of the film, which so moved Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese that he got on board to help bring it to the world. There are millions of such friendships which cross religious and caste divides in India, its director told AFP, "but it has never been shown" before on the big screen. "Only a handful of films have ever featured Dalit (lower caste) stories and most of those were made by people from the privileged castes," Ghaywan said. Ghaywan is that very rare beast in Bollywood—a Dalit director from the lowest rung in the rigid Hindu caste system. He believes he is the "first acknowledged Dalit behind a camera in the history of Hindi cinema. That's a stunning disparity," he told AFP. And one that means the stories of the quarter of India's 1.4 billion people who are tribals or come from castes once disparagingly known as "untouchables", are not being seen. "India and the world really needs to see their stories," said Ghaywan, adding that with such a vast population "it is understandable that they are often talked of as just statistics." "I myself come from a marginalised background. I am a Dalit. So there's a lot of me in the movie," said Ghaywan, who lives near Mumbai but grew up in the south. It is also loosely inspired by a heartbreaking real-life tale of poor workers who set out on foot on an epic journey back to their village from the city during the Covid lockdowns. Ghaywan brought his two leading actors, Bollywood heartthrob Ishaan Khatter and rising star Vishal Jethwa, out to the villages to see the lives of India's poor from the inside. "We did a long immersive exercise," Ghaywan told AFP. "We got to know people and ate in their homes. It was genuinely such a humbling experience." Avoiding controversy The country is currently on the edge after four days of fighting with Muslim-majority Pakistan following a deadly terror attack in Indian Kashmir last month. Knowing he has to get past India's censors, Ghaywan insisted he has tried to avoid politics or inflaming tensions. Sandhya Suri's movie Santosh, which premiered at Cannes last year, still hasn't screened in India despite winning a heap of international awards. Santosh shone a light on sexism, religious discrimination and corruption in the Indian police as well as the treatment of lower caste people. "I like to keep politics underneath the narrative, because if your politics supersedes the story it's just propaganda. Even good propaganda is propaganda. It's not cinema," Ghaywan added. Emotion, however, holds no fear for Ghaywan. "I embrace it. I make no apologies for it. We Indians are an emotional people and this is a story that brings up a lot of them," he explained. Industry insiders have "bawled and bawled" at private screenings of the film, he told AFP, with Scorsese saying that "Neeraj has made a beautifully crafted film that's a significant contribution to Indian cinema." He said he wasn't surprised that Cannes snapped it up for its secondary Certain Regard selection after Ghaywan won two prizes there in 2015 with his debut film Masaan. Flattered as he is, Ghaywan said that "I did not make the movie for festivals" or arthouse audiences. "The most important thing is that it is seen in India," he told AFP. Ghaywan stressed that Homebound is "attacking no one", with its story even set "in a fictional state". India is very much in the spotlight at Cannes with Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) getting a gala screening after Hollywood director Wes Anderson helped pay for the restoration of the 1970 masterpiece.
