Ritesh Aggarwal on Turnaround Management

The contraction — withdrawing from several international markets and reducing the asset base — was the corrective to the prior over-expansion, and the firm's eventual IPO filing reflected a re-priced, narrower but more profitable business than the peak-growth narrative had implied.

The case frames the contraction as the necessary repricing of an asset-light hospitality model whose unit economics had been masked by growth capital, and notes that the post-contraction margins were structurally healthier than the pre-pandemic ones.