In an environment where real estate investment playbooks have been disrupted by a sluggish transaction market and greater complexity, Orka Investments is betting on operational expertise for value creation.
Founded in 2020 by Raoul Malhotra, the London-based investment firm has built a platform spanning both hospitality and living assets, focusing on sectors where performance is driven as much by operations as by real estate fundamentals. Today, Orka’s portfolio includes three hotels in the UK and Spain as well as approximately 2,000 PBSA beds, giving the company presence across two of Europe's most dynamic operational real estate sectors.
For Malhotra, the strength of hospitality as an asset class goes beyond beds, and this creates opportunity in student living too.
"It has been really interesting working across both sectors because many of the lessons from one can be applied to the other. They are different asset classes, but they share a number of operational fundamentals,” he said
While hotels have been pursuing multiple revenue streams beyond rooms, Malhotra believes PBSA is yet to unlock similar opportunities. “One reason I’m drawn to hospitality is that a hotel can contain several businesses under one roof: rooms, food and beverage, meetings and events, spa and wellness, and retail. PBSA has not fully embraced that mindset and often still focuses primarily on 44- or 51-week leases. We are constantly looking at how to improve the resident experience, make better use of the asset and create additional revenue streams.”
This focus on operational excellence has attracted institutional partners including Nuveen, Bain Capital and BGO. The next phase of growth is centred on platform creation: Orka aims to aggregate properties, build operational infrastructure and potentially develop proprietary brands that can be leveraged across portfolios.
“Our ambition is to find an investment partner who shares our view of hospitality, not simply acquiring individual assets, but building a genuine hospitality platform with the right operating infrastructure and, potentially, a brand of our own” says Malhotra.
A live example is the former Park Lane Mews Hotel in Mayfair, London, which Orka acquired off-market in 2021 with Bain Capital. Due to open in September 2026, the asset is going through a comprehensive redevelopment to be repositioned into The Shepherd Mayfair, an 82-room luxury boutique hotel with three distinct food and beverage concepts. While the project has experienced delays, Malhotra hopes to replicate this model in future, in the UK and beyond: “We are looking on a pan-European basis, focusing on gateway cities and established hospitality destinations where demand remains enduring and new supply is constrained.”
As transaction volumes remain subdued across hospitality, Orka’s focus on operational performance is critical. “The biggest challenge at present is the gap between vendor pricing expectations and what can realistically be supported by today’s cost of capital, construction costs and operating environment” says Malhotra. “There are still attractive opportunities, but successful underwriting requires a detailed understanding of operations, disciplined capital expenditure and a realistic plan for improving the performance of the asset.”
Orka's model reflects a broader shift that has become significant within hospitality investment: success built on asset management and operational expertise rather than primarily transactions.
Raoul Malhotra will be speaking at the Annual Hospitality Conference in Manchester on 14-15 September, in the session ‘Private equity outlook: Pricing risk in a slower transaction market’