The joint venture is looking to acquire operational or stuck hotel projects that can be turned around quickly, apart from developing greenfield properties.

Thai firm Onyx Hospitality, which runs the Amari brand of hotels, has set up a joint venture with hotel asset management firm Kingsbridge India to set up 7 hotels in the country by 2018 for which the JV will raise $100 million.

A part of the $100 million will come from the two partners while the rest will be raised fromprivate equity and institutional investors, said the chief executive officer of the company Peter Henley.

The joint venture is looking to acquire operational or stuck hotel projects that can be turned around quickly, apart from developing greenfield properties, he said. Outside of this joint venture, Onyx already has a tie-up with Kingsbridge for two 120 room hotels, in Noida and Ahmedabad that are under construction.

The Thai company plans to target the top metros and also secondary cities such as Pune, Goa, Kochi, Jaipur, Trivandrum, Hyderabad and others with their different formats — Saffron, Amari, Shama and OZO — that operate in the three and four star categories. Even though the Indian hotel industry has been struggling over the last few years because of oversupply and sluggish occupancy rates, Henley said this is a good time to enter the country considering the new political environment, the profile of tourism in the Indian cabinet and steps that are being taken to grow inbound tourism in the country, including visa on arrival. "Now is the time."

His reading might be right. Average room occupancy rates stood at 58.2% for the nine months ended September 2014, up marginally from 56.4% same period last year, according to STR Global.

Rating agency ICRA expects the Indian hotel industry revenue growth to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16, on the back of modest increase in occupancy and marginal increase in room rates.

Henley said they have studied the market over the last 18 months and they now see demand starting to catch up with supply here. "Occupancy levels are going up and inbound travel numbers are encouraging. Also, Modi's new cities push will help business travel," he said.