Exclusive cigar lounges in Gurgaon catching fancy of city corporates and entrepreneurs

Cigars are no longer just about an affordable luxury, a lifestyle or a pastime but much more than that to many cigar aficionados in the millennium city. A healthy mix of entrepreneurs, corporate, or CXOs including women in Gurgaon are using this unique smoking ritual for business networking and facilitating it for them are the exclusive cigar lounges that have come up in the city in the past one year.

The Cigar Lounge at The Oberoi Gurgaon, Baronial Cigar Lounge at Golfworx in Ambience Mall and the Cyber Green located Tab01 Cigar Lounge are offering the best of cigars paired with the finest malts to corporates and social achievers in the city to relax and talk business at the same time.

"We have 10-15 business meetings every month at our Cigar and Malt lounge from various companies in Gurgaon including Microsoft, IBM and DuPont among others," said Vinay Rathore, manager at Tab01 Kitchen and Lounge, which started its lounge in December 2010. It is a one-of-a-kind destination to have business meetings with complete business solutions in the luxury of leather couch seating and high-speed Wi-Fi connection.

Prashant Gupta, food and beverages manager at Udyog Vihar located The Oberoi, which houses India's first exclusive cigar lounge in a hotel, said they have seen up to 35-40 percent increase in their footfalls since they launched the lounge in April 2011. "We started with an average of eight covers each day, mostly in the evenings. We now have around 15-20. We also have a lot of regular/repeat guests," he said.

"While evenings are busier, we have also seen an increase during the day and early afternoon. Some business meetings have also taken place in the lounge. Evenings are more about social gatherings. Since this is adjoining The Piano Bar, we see people from the bar walk in and try a cigar. A number of guests who appreciate fine cigars have also taken them as gifts and take away for their house parties, barbeque evenings, etc.," he added.

The cigar lounge at The Oberoi, Gurgaon stocks over 30 brands of hand rolled Cubans price starting from from Rs 750 onwards (plus taxes). "Our selection of cigars include: Cohiba Robustos, Cohiba Siglo V, Montecristo Grand Edmundo LTD EDI'2010, Montecristo No 2, Partagas Serie D Especial LTD EDI'2010, Romeo Y Julieta Churchills (T)," informed Mr Gupta.

As per Ameeta Seth, director at Cingari, the first company to import Cuban cigars back in 1998, the market for cigars has grown approximately 35-40 percent in recent years."From 50 customers ten years back,our customer base has increased to 50,000 at present," she said. Talking about the increasing cigar culture in Gurgaon, she said, "There has be a change in the trend in recent years where in a lot of young corporates in their 30s and 40s have started smoking cigars."

Today, about 7.5 million cigars are sold in the country and over the next three years, the figure is expected to scale 10 million. As the market has grown, so has the number of bigger players. On the business logic behind choosing Gurgaon for launching its cigar lounge, Mr Gupta said, "Gurgaon is now the centre of most activities for Delhi and the national capital region. People residing in and visiting Gurgaon are well travelled and appreciate fine things. Dining out and visiting hotel has become more experiential and our guests too want to experiment with new things. This makes Gurgaon the perfect destination for a cigar lounge."