Our Story
At the heart of Dalwadi Hospitality Management is a family story rooted in grit, gratitude, and the belief that hospitality is more than a business. It is a way of life.
Our journey began in a small twenty room motel and restaurant in Dayton, Texas, where we learned the meaning of service by living it. As children of Indian immigrants, we grew up watching our parents build their version of the American dream. Our father commuted to Houston for his chemical engineering job during the week, while our mother ran the motel full time, with us by her side.
We earned ten cents for folding towels, twenty five cents per room cleaned, and a lifetime of lessons in between. On weekends, our father taught us how to fix broken pipes, patch drywall, and maintain equipment. He called it helping. We now recognize it as an early education in resilience and resourcefulness. By the time we were twelve, we could rent rooms, answer phones, and cut duplicate keys. Long before we learned terms like RevPAR or ADR, we were living them.
Our mother reused discarded soap to wash linens, an early lesson in sustainability that we later formalized by partnering with Clean the World. Our father believed deeply in the power of knowledge. He took us to land auctions and construction sites and earned electrical, HVAC, and plumbing licenses himself, so that no one could fool him. That mindset shaped our approach to business and to life.
Together, as young adults, we helped build our family first ground up property, a twenty one room motel with living quarters. As our portfolio grew, so did our skills. We rotated between the front desk, laundry, revenue management, operations, and vendor negotiations, and we entered franchising with brands like Holiday Inn Express, Comfort Inn, Rodeway Inn & Suites, America's Best Value Inn, and later Marriott.
In 2014 we co-founded Dalwadi Hospitality Management. Each of us took on a leadership role, united by shared values of humility, innovation, and impact. In 2017 we opened Hotel Ylem, a boutique property inspired by the element of water and feminine energy that became a platform for conscious hospitality, philanthropy, and creativity. When we opened our first Marriott property in Katy, Texas, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was our training, teamwork, and tenacity that kept the doors open while others closed.
Today, DHM is a family grown vision carried forward by a talented team who have become an extension of our own family. We are still learning and still evolving, but we never forget where we started. Hospitality, to us, is deeply personal. It is about welcoming others the way we were taught to welcome, with warmth, respect, and a heart that cannot be broken.