Partner, Olive Bar & Kitchen Pvt Ltd – Hyderabad

Shaaz Mehmood, Partner with the Olive Bar & Kitchen Pvt. Ltd. in Olive Bistro & Bar, SodaBottleOpenerWala, The Hoppery & Giggle Water, Hyderabad is a dynamic and performance-oriented Indian entrepreneur and humanitarian. His acumen to conceptualize, build and lead top flight teams aligned to achieving overall business objectives across diverse industries include Hospitality, Healthcare, Food Processing Manufacturing Medical Device & Mining. He has recently been elected as the Managing Committee Member of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) for the period 2021-23.

Shaaz’s passion for food developed at a young age when he wielded the ladle at the age of 12. He partnered with the Olive Bar & Kitchen Pvt. Ltd, in 2013 to extend their brands in the city under the mentorship of AD Singh. Shaaz set up the Olive Bistro & Bar at the stunning lakeside property in 2013 at a time when Hyderabad was still comforting itself to the idea of specialty restaurants. In 2015 he went on to partner and open SodaBottleOpenerWala followed by the Olive group’s first Microbrewery The Hoppery in Hyderabad. In 2018, he partnered with the Olive group and reopened Ek Bar in Delhi in a bold avatar. He also has the distinction of opening Giggle Water, Hyderabad’s first speakeasy in 2018.

In addition to these restaurants Shaaz has been the go-to project lead for the company owing to his expertise in running tight schedules & costs to set up new restaurants. He has supported & led projects like the Olive Bistro & Bar in Mumbai & Gurugram; Olive Bar & Kitchen, Goa; SodaBottleOpenerWala & Lady Baga, Bengaluru and Hello Guppy, Mumbai.

Shaaz is a humanitarian and a philanthropic educator. He is the founder and president of Youth Feed India, an initiative that ran one of the largest and most wide scale food relief operations for the daily wage workers and marginalized communities across the country during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, and the floods in Hyderabad. Youth Feed India raised over INR 5 crore and provided over 70 lakh+ meals across 14 states in the country. Their mission is to ensure that no Indian goes hungry. He is also wholeheartedly involved as a treasurer of Kitchens Against Hunger, an Olive Group CSR initiative. Shaaz is a member of the prestigious Hyderabad Public Schools Society (established in 1950) which owns and manages four schools in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh with a combined strength of 9,500 students. For Shaaz, who is a self-proclaimed workaholic, work is worship. He hopes to continue serving the country and it’s people in every way possible.

Shaaz has diverse business interests and is the promoter and director of Medijourn Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a strategic partner of the Apollo Hospitals Group, that is committed to transforming the medical value travel industry through technological advancement. He is also the promoter and director of Wadi Surgicals Pvt. Ltd., a medical device manufacturing company that is setting up India’s first and largest nitrile glove manufacturing facility in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Mission.

Shaaz’s professional trajectory began with his family enterprise in limestone mining in the rural parts of Karnataka with the Wadi Stone Marketing Company Pvt. Ltd. (est. 1950). He has also worked in the industrial sector with Lafarge Cements through 2012 at their factories in Chhattisgarh and their corporate office in Mumbai to understand the dynamics of operating a large-scale manufacturing unit.

Shaaz was born in Hyderabad and studied at the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet. He went on to study and obtain a degree in law (B.A. LLB) from the Osmania University in 2011.