Sonal Sahoo, Director and Co-founder of Lyfe Hotels. has big plans to expand her hotel chain in eastern India. From the current 138 keys, predominantly in Odisha, she plans to take it up to 700 keys in the next five years, with a presence in Darjeeling, West Bengal.
In another corner of the country, equally ambitious is her younger sister Sophina Sahoo, Director of WGH Hotels and Resorts. She plans to expand the chain’s footprint from the current 140 or so, primarily in Kerala, to 500 keys in the next five years, expanding into Tamil Nadu.
From Barbil to Bhubaneswar to West Bengal, and from Alappuzha to Ashtamudi to Tuticorin, the way the two different brands under the umbrella of The World Hotels managed by two sisters are expanding is a fascinating story of growth and diversification.
Giving Lyfe
The Sahoo sisters say they are accidental hoteliers. “Our core business has been mining ever since our dad ventured into it some 40 years ago, and then steel,” says Sonal. In a way, the hospitality journey may have started when their dad, Shrinibash Sahoo, founder of The World Group, acquired a small 27 keys hotel in the mining town of Barbil, where they were based, some 25 years ago. But Sonal says, “There was no plan as such of getting into hospitality when this hotel was taken.”
She says the idea came up in 2007, when the family shifted to Bhubaneswar, and her dad purchased a plot of land on Janpath road with the idea of building a hotel. But due to various other business priorities, it was only in 2020, that the group started construction of the hotel, which was eventually branded as Lyfe (a name suggested by a Thai consultancy). Meanwhile, they acquired a hotel in Kerala in Alappuzha and branded it as WGH Backwaters – WGH standing for World Group Heritance.
While Sonal manages the Lyfe brand in the East, Sophina who is married to a Malayali, manages the WGH brand in the south. There are plans to create a new mid-market brand in the next few months.
Sophina Sahoo
An engineer and an MBA, Sonal had at first joined the family mining company, but then moved into overseeing the Lyfe hotel operations. Sophina, meanwhile did her BBA and MBA and like Sonal joined the diversified group, but settled down in the hospitality operations in the south.
WGH currently has three operational hotels – besides the one at Alappuzha, there are two properties in Munnar and Thekkady, both acquired and rebranded. The next set of hotels however will be Greenfield, says Sophina. In Kochi, for instance, near the airport, there is one under construction that she says will take two years. Another property is coming up in Trivandrum and one in Ashtamudi. “We are also entering Tamil Nadu, with a project in Tuticorin,” says Sophina.
WGH properties will be a mix of business hotels and leisure, says Sophina, but she says even the business hotels will have a very Kerala vibe in the architecture.
Meanwhile, Sonal says Lyfe will be expanding into Puri, Darjeeling and Gopalpur. “The Puri project will start next year,” says Sonal.
Making a ‘State’ment
While the expansion goals of both sisters are the same, the context of the two States they operate in are very different, they point out. As Sonal says, “While tourism is mainstream in Kerala and heavily promoted, in Odisha, it is just picking up. There are a lot of virgin places with practically no tourism.”
And therein lies the opportunity, she feels, describing how locations with beautiful landscapes like Koraput, Hirakud, Taptapani have not been marketed. “So these are places which are very exotic, very virgin,” she says, also pointing to opportunities in Paradip, as well as the new ports coming up in the State.
Unlike Kerala which has the most airports, Odisha is one of the States with the least number of airports. But, as Sonal says, the vision 2036 and 2047 plan of the Odisha government envisages big transformation in terms of infrastructure, road, railways, and air transformation. And Lyfe is gearing up for that. “The broad spectrum is that we want to grow within the state and then slowly grow outside the State.”
Published on September 29, 2025