Under the leadership of Keshav Suri, The LaLiT has built queer visibility across hospitality, employment, nightlife and culture, with Kitty Su and Pure Love Nights continuing that work in June 2026.
In 2026, as Indian companies increasingly adopt Pride led campaigns, DEI messaging and inclusion focused branding, The LaLiT Hotels stands apart for having placed LGBTQIA+ visibility at the centre of its identity long before the conversation became common in corporate India.
For more than 15 years, The LaLiT has built a visible ecosystem for queer inclusion across hospitality, nightlife, employment, culture and community engagement. At a time when few mainstream Indian brands were willing to publicly occupy this space, the group opened its platforms to queer guests, employees, artists, performers, creators and communities.
The distinction for The LaLiT lies in the fact that inclusion was not treated as a seasonal campaign. It became part of the brand’s cultural identity and continued across its hotels, events and associated platforms.
Under the leadership associated with Mr. Keshav Suri, The LaLiT emerged as one of India’s early hospitality groups to publicly support queer visibility and safe spaces within mainstream luxury hospitality. LGBTQIA+ individuals became part of the workforce, creative ecosystem, nightlife programming and cultural storytelling years before inclusion became a wider industry trend.
Keshav Suri, Executive Director, The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group and Founder, Keshav Suri Foundation, said, “Long before inclusion became a corporate conversation or Pride became a calendar moment, The LaLiT chose to stand with the queer community, not as an act of allyship, but as a deeply held value. For over four decades now, we have built spaces where people can live, work, celebrate, perform, and simply be themselves with dignity and without fear. Through platforms like Kitty Su and across every experience we create, we have championed queer visibility, amplified unheard voices, and nurtured communities when few others would. The LaLiT proudly has created the spaces where Pride could truly exist, grow, and flourish. That legacy continues to guide us with humility, authenticity, responsibility, and immense pride every single day.”
Kitty Su remains one of the clearest examples of this approach. For over a decade, the venue has functioned as more than a nightclub, becoming one of India’s recognised queer safe cultural spaces. It has platformed drag performers, queer artists, trans voices, underground collectives and alternative performance cultures before such representation entered mainstream nightlife and entertainment conversations.
The venue also helped normalise queer visibility within luxury hospitality spaces, a space once viewed as commercially risky in India.
In June 2026, The LaLiT is extending this legacy through Pure Love Nights at Kitty Su, New Delhi. The month long Pride cultural series reflects the group’s broader focus on representation, self expression, performance, fashion and community storytelling.
Pure Love Nights will include drag artistry, trans led performances, immersive nightlife concepts, fashion led experiences and digital first storytelling. The series aims to take conversations beyond physical venues into online communities, editorial platforms, creators, podcasts and youth culture during Pride Month.
The timing is significant as India’s corporate sector enters a new phase of inclusion, with large organisations increasingly recognising queer representation, equitable workplaces and inclusive storytelling. While many brands are beginning that journey now, The LaLiT has built a legacy through years of visible participation.
By engaging with Pride and queer culture before it became widely accepted, commercially safer or culturally expected, The LaLiT occupies a distinct position in Indian hospitality. Its work has not only supported Pride culture in India, but also helped create spaces where it could exist, grow and remain visible.
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