The Kin, Mumbai’s new boutique hotel, features design-forward rooms, personalised services, and quirky decor

The Kin, Mumbai’s new boutique hotel, features design-forward rooms, personalised services, and quirky decor

A black rotary dial phone sits by my bedside. I pick up the receiver — hit the pudgy number keys that have replaced the traditional fingerwheel — and ask room service to draw me a bath. Which they do, along with candles placed around the sunken stone tub. Then stepping on to the terrazzo flooring I walk across the room and read the handwritten note left for me. Sounds like a scene from another century? But it is 2025 and I am at The Kin hotel in Mumbai’s Prabhadevi, enjoying a slice of quiet in a city bustling with people, cars, restaurants, and life.

The charm of this boutique hotel lies in the fact that once you enter its fluted glass doors, you could be anywhere: an artist’s studio in New York, a boutique in Prague, or a villa in Lake Como... The space is eclectic, consciously steering clear of the cookie cutter design that many hotels have. Each corner, corridor, and almost every room has a different vibe, sometimes retro chic, sometimes edgy, at other times Bohemian.

Siblings Imrun Sethi and Guneet Singh, founders of The Kin, wanted their personality to seep into every nook, cranny, and crevice of this hotel. For example, Imrun’s love for music manifests in the form of a cosy listening station in the stairwell of the lobby. There is a plush tasselled chair with a table that appears to be melting and dripping (that’s the design) and atop it sits a vinyl record player. “We have 35 labels, right from Tom Petty and Pearl Jam to The Verve, Aerosmith and Red Hot Chili Peppers,” says Imrun, who years ago started out as a musician and DJ. As a result, the music across the lobby and the adjoining restaurant (Terttulia also part of the hotel) is an absorbing mix of genres, and introduced me to a techno marching band from Germany as I enjoyed my masala chai and biscotti.

Guneet is the one with an eye for art. So, the hotel has a design store in the lobby. It is a mixed bag of handcrafted decor pieces like vases, candelabras, lamps, and glassware, all curated by Guneet. A lot of these are conceptualised by her and she works with artisans across India to get them made according to her design, informs Imrun. There are also coffee table books, cushions, art, flowers, Kin merchandise including their range of shampoos and lotions (the range is called sKIN), and signature scent called Grape Royale.

Not just the lobby, the artifacts and art theme runs through the property. The corridors and rooms are dotted with unique paraphernalia, art, lamps, furniture and interestingly, everything you see in this hotel, except for the furnishing, is for sale.

The lobby has the words Chec Kin. (Clearly, they love punning here.) Beside it is the vintage looking lift in black metal. The landings too are Instaworthy nooks with mirrors and dramatic lights hanging from the ceiling. There are 15 rooms spread across three floors. Each room has a personality of its own, with different layouts, flooring ranging from chevron patterns and marble to wood and terrazzo. The rooms also have writing nooks, and porthole windows, most overlooking the quiet leafy street outside, with glimpses of the blue Arabian sea on one side. “Every room has four windows and one in the bathroom, so there is a lot of natural light. Sunlight is a big deal for me,” says Imrun, as he gives me a tour of the sun-drenched terrace that houses a compact gym with battle ropes, Olympic rings, monkey bars. We also do yoga, HIIT, breathwork here,” he adds.

The building, though trendy now, was very old school till about a few years ago. It was called Hotel Parkway earlier and was owned by Imrun and Guneet’s grandfather. “My grandad gave it to my mom. My sister and I renovated it and changed everything — the look, design, feel,” says Imrun, adding that the vibe is quirky and young now. It has just been a couple of weeks since The Kin opened and Imrun says he has already got clients from Poland, and the UK staying with them. “My first idea was to get 13 different designers to do each room and leave one each for Guneet and me. I realised that would have been a logistical nightmare,” he laughs, adding, “This is our passion project, so finally it was Guneet's and my ideas and thoughts coming together to create this.”