Bhuvnesh Mendiratta, managing director of Miraj Cinemas, dies of brain stroke at 40

MUMBAI: Bhuvnesh Mendiratta is dead. The managing director of Miraj Cinemas suffered a sudden brain stroke on Wednesday morning and did not survive it. He was in his forties. India’s multiplex industry, still finding its feet after a bruising few years, has lost one of its most purposeful builders far too soon.

Mendiratta had been at Miraj’s helm only since 2025, elevated from chief operating officer to managing director in what felt like the natural next step for a man who had spent years quietly doing the hard work. Under his watch, the chain scaled to over 235 screens, pushing deliberately into tier-2 and tier-3 markets at a time when the rest of the industry was still fixating on mall-heavy metros. Premium formats, underserved towns, disciplined expansion: these were his signatures.

His career traced an arc that few in the exhibition business could match for sheer range. It began, improbably enough, as a trainee at Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, followed by stints at Taj Hotels and IHG, the kind of hospitality grounding that instils a bone-deep instinct for the customer. He then crossed into entertainment, moving through Fun Cinemas, Cinemax India and PVR before arriving at Miraj, where he rose steadily until there was nowhere left to rise.

He was not yet done. That, perhaps, is what stings most. Mendiratta represented something the industry badly needs: a generation of operators who understand both the spreadsheet and the screen, who see a cinema not merely as real estate to be sweated but as an experience to be crafted. The tier-2 ambition, the premium pivot, the operational rigour: all of it had the feel of a long game being carefully laid out.

The screens will keep running and the strategy will endure. But leaders who combine operational grit with genuine vision are rare, and Mendiratta was one of them. India’s cinema industry will not easily find another.