Team

Raju Patil is Managing Principal of Pravah Collective. Everything this practice is built on traces back to decisions he made long before there was a portfolio.

He began in hospitality in the kitchens of Carnival cruise ships working Caribbean routes, where he became a significant part of the culinary operation. He came ashore into lodging, working as front desk manager at motels alongside his wife, and learned this business from the counter rather than from a spreadsheet.

In 1999 he opened his own Indian restaurant near the University of Southern California and ran it until 2013. Independent restaurants are the least forgiving operation in this industry, and the discipline those fourteen years demanded is the discipline he later brought to hotels.

La Casa Inn was his first property and remains the purchase that matters most to him. It is the building that made everything after it possible, including the second property, and it is the standard the rest of the portfolio is measured against. It is also what he intends to hand to the next generation of the family.

Prash Patil leads acquisitions and development at Pravah Collective, where he sources and underwrites new property and works alongside the operating teams across the portfolio.

He began in wealth management, at a Pasadena advisory firm, and in mortgage operations. Both taught him to read a deal from the lender side of the table before he ever sat on the other one. He later moved to brand operations at Marriott International, an education in what a flag does for a hotel and, more usefully, what it does not.

He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, where he graduated cum laude. He writes the dispatches published on this site.