Rahul Akerkar

Training at The Doon School, Franklin & Marshall College, and Columbia University gave Rahul Akerkar a formal base before the harder education of American kitchens. In the United States, he worked as a dishwasher, server, and chef, moving through the full service chain and learning the pace, pressure, and discipline of restaurant work from the ground up. That range of roles reads less like a résumé flourish than a practical apprenticeship in how kitchens function and how dining rooms hold together.

In India, the work shifted from operating inside kitchens to shaping businesses around them. In 1989, Rahul Akerkar became co-founder at Just Desserts in India, then went on to found Under The Over in Mumbai, India, and deGustibus Hospitality in Mumbai, India, which he founded and led from 1996–2015. The pattern is clear: concept, structure, scale. Each step widened the frame from single-room execution to hospitality built as a system.

Indigo in Colaba, Mumbai, India became one of the strongest markers of that approach, where Rahul served as founder and director de cuisine from 1999–2015. A long run at that level points to a kitchen identity that held over time, not just in one opening moment. “I think it's my father's mother, my grandmother, that first inspired me.” Rahul has said.

Indigo in Mumbai remains central to how Rahul Akerkar is read within the city’s dining history. The restaurant functions as a fixed reference point in his profile, the place where his name is tied to a certain kind of modern restaurant ambition. Even with later moves, Indigo continues to anchor the way his work is discussed.

Tadke Wale Pomfret is listed among Rahul Akerkar’s signature dishes. A named dish like this does specific work: it gives a kitchen a shorthand, and it gives a chef a point of recognition that travels beyond a single service. In trade terms, a signature is not decoration; it is a repeatable marker of identity.

Rahul’s own language about cooking is compact. That restraint matters. It suggests a preference for letting the restaurant, the plate, and the room carry the argument rather than building it in commentary. In that register, the work is allowed to stand on its own terms. He later created and led deGustibus Hospitality, and by 2024 he was serving as Creative & Culinary Director at Aditya Birla New Age Hospitality while overseeing Mumbai restaurants including Ode and Waarsa.