(From top) Australian wine importer, Darren Centofanti; chef Maximiliano Cotilli; sommelier Claudia Cesarino; Roger Habermacher who has been with Hyatt for 13 years; the interiors of Stella at The Leela Kempinski in Mumbai

Armed with a world vineyard map, glasses and the unblinking gaze of his class of 12, the gelled-to-attention Silvano Charrier expounds on the bouquets of a freshly arrived stock. A pause later, the gathering of waiters raises their glass and sniff, sip and smile. “To sell the wine, you have to taste the wine,” the expert emphasises with a flourish.

This chief sommelier is French, the restaurant Italian and the location, the five-star Leela Kempinski in Mumbai.

As India plunges itself into a global culture and increasingly discovers a taste for foreign fare, international talent in the domestic hospitality business is extending beyond that of manager or chef, to newer niches. So be it wine, food or management, a global staffing and entrepreneurial presence on local terrain is becoming gradually more visible.

Like Silvano, Claudia Cesarino, too, is a sommelier. The 26-year-old first came to India in July on the invitation of Alessia Antinori who looks after her family’s six centuries, 26-generations-old premier Italian label of Marchesi Antinori in Asia. Claudia was asked to conduct a two-week training session at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai and Sheraton, Delhi. At the end of that fortnight, Sonarys, an Indian importer of foreign wines, signed her on for a year to visit hotels across India, while she continues to collaborate with Antinori. Her engagements will take her to luxury star hotels in Goa, Delhi, Jaipur and Udaipur.

While the more adventurous such as Claudia and Silvano see individual opportunity in the world food and beverages business, for the more established hotels and restaurants, on the managerial side it is a part of their staffing policy. Something that brought Roger Habermacher to India. The Hyatt as a policy rotates its senior managers through different countries. Roger Habermacher is Swiss, and has been with the Hyatt for 13 years. Before coming to Mumbai, he was in Dubai and Jakarta.

“Mumbai is very demanding, very hectic. The way business is done here is to do it quickly, to get it over and done with. One has to be constantly on the ball here; if you are not there, someone else will be. There is just no end to business,” says Habermacher.

According to a study by efenbe, an online Indian magazine on the F&B industry, in the next five years the demand for hotel accommodation is estimated at 100,000-250,000 which would bring about over 1.87 lakh new jobs in operations and at the managerial level. “We foresee some of the international companies having larger operations in India than several domestic players,” the study said. The combined output of catering and hotel institutes would fall short of demand at current levels. Those like Silvano who posted their resume on the Net are quite likely to find an offer in their inbox.

Even traditionally, the growth in the hotel industry has brought in short-to-long-term global talent who are sent by their respective organisations for multicultural and international exposure. “Acculturalisation is what some of our managers from our international properties come here for,” says Yogi Sriram, Taj Hotels, senior vice-president, human relations. He does not see any shortage of Indian managers in the growing hotel business that would call for talent from overseas. But Raymond Bickson, the managing director and CEO of Indian Hotels Company Ltd, which owns the Taj Group, is an American, who took over the helm three years ago.

The chain has an “international swap policy” for Indian general managers who work as shadows to GMs in foreign properties. It also takes in summer interns from Singapore National University.

However, says Habermacher, the rapid growth of the industry here has diluted professional quality. It is difficult to find mature professionals because of a shortage of people. “The senior positions are filled often by managers who do not have knowledge. The Hyatt tends to focus on internal growth, which is why unlike other hotels we do not work double or triple shifts.”

Darren Centofanti is not your regular F&B guy or a hotel manager. But there are rich pickings if new opportunities can be harvested innovatively. Mumbai-based Centofanti, a glamour photographer who is married to a leading Indian model, is an Australian who imports Aussie wine under the name Pick of the Bunch Grapes. His partner is a Sydney-based Australian, and like him, has an Indian wife. “India is a growing wine market and I am pitching Aussie wine, for that is my USP.”

Darren points out that the Indian wine industry is estimated to have grown by over 25 per cent over the last three years. Custom authorities report that nearly $10 million of wine was imported in 2005-2006, over half of which included high-end French wines, followed by Australian wines. It is estimated that the wine industry itself could be worth Rs 2,000 crores by 2010.

That statistic probably explains the rush to start wine boutique restaurants and bring in sommeliers from overseas. “The Leela was not a wine hotel before it started Stella,” points out Silvano. The hotel offered to fly him out for a weekend job interview and then signed him on.

“I get to work in India,” he says with some bemusement and a marked French accent that made earlier classes a touch incomprehensible to his ‘class’. He goes, “No, no, no” to all requests for Black Label or any tipple that is not wine. And he woos the wives — once they acquiesce to a bottle the husbands usually follow, is Silvano’s observation.

Leela employs 20 expatriates in India, including nine in the F&B section. Stella’s chef, Maximiliano Cotilli, is Italian. “Maxi spends 12 hours with his wife, 12 with me,” jokes Silvano. “Sometimes more. I know him better than his wife.”