Profile
Rish Saini
Hospitality entrepreneur · restaurant concept creator · operator · consultant
Rish Saini creates restaurant concepts as someone who has had to run them. He designs the whole restaurant experience: menu, service, brand and space, not just interiors. Two decades in hospitality have taken him from the restaurant floor to founding Underdoggs and Breakthrough Design Studio, and to directing Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe.
Current roles
Founder & Director
Operator-led hospitality concept, design and development practice, established in 2018.
Founder & Director
Sports bar brand founded in 2011, now operating ten locations across India.
Director
Bakery and café brand founded in 2006 by his father, Preet Saini.
Founder
AI for Hospitality (opens in a new tab)
Practical AI learning and private advisory for restaurants, bars and cafés.
Two decades in hospitality
Rish Saini’s hospitality career began in 2006, serving tables in restaurants in the United States. The floor is where a restaurant’s earlier decisions are tested: whether the layout helps the service, and whether the menu holds up on a full night.
From the floor he moved into ownership, founding Underdoggs in 2011. As Founder & Director he has lived with the consequences of design, menu and staffing decisions long after opening night.
Design grew out of operating. Rish began designing Underdoggs venues himself, starting with the brand’s Punjab venues in 2017, and in 2018 he established Breakthrough Design Studio on the principle that concept, design, food and beverage, operations and brand should be developed together rather than passed between separate specialists. Over 2018 and 2019 his design work included Underdoggs Aerocity and Cyber Hub and, through the studio, Woks & Pans in Gurugram.
Alongside the studio, Rish is Director of Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe, the brand his father founded. Today he leads Breakthrough Design Studio and AI for Hospitality, and directs Underdoggs and Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe.
Designing from the operator’s side of the table
A restaurant can look exceptional and still fail commercially. A menu can read well and still be impossible to execute consistently. A bar can carry an impressive drinks programme and still be slow to work behind. Judged on appearance alone, a design hides these problems until after opening, when they are most expensive to fix.
Rish has spent his career where those problems land: first on the floor, then as an owner and director answerable for how a venue trades long after opening day. He designs from that side of the table.
His design work starts with operating questions. Who the guest is, and when they come. What they will spend. What the menu asks of the kitchen, and what the kitchen asks of the floor plan. The room takes shape from those answers, so that the layout, covers, circulation, bar position and service routes support the business rather than work against it. The full sequence is set out in the BDS approach.
Selected restaurant design work
Breakthrough Design Studio is Rish’s studio, established in 2018. The three Punjab venues of 2017 came before it.
- 2017Underdoggs LudhianaLudhianaVenue design
- 2017Underdoggs JalandharJalandharVenue design
- 2017Underdoggs AmritsarAmritsarVenue design
- 2018Woks & PansFirst design project outside UnderdoggsGurugramRestaurant design
- 2018–2019Underdoggs AerocityNew DelhiVenue design
- 2018–2019Underdoggs Cyber HubGurugramVenue design
- 2019Uptown EscapeGuwahatiConcept to completion
- 2025Nuts & BrewGuwahatiRepositioning
- 2025Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe, Golf Course Road flagshipGurugramFlagship design
- 2026Ālaya Café & BarShillongConcept to opening
Underdoggs
Designing venues for the brand he founded
Rish personally designed five Underdoggs venues: Aerocity in New Delhi, Cyber Hub in Gurugram, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar. Designing for a brand he also directs means the work is judged on how the venues trade as well as how they look. In a sports bar that comes down to specifics: sightlines to the screens, the length and position of the bar, and seating that suits a quiet afternoon as well as a full match night.
Underdoggs Arena, the brand’s flagship, is not among them. Rish did not originally design it; he was deeply involved in completing it.
- Founded
- 2011
- Role
- Founder & Director
- Designed by Rish
- Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar (2017) · Aerocity, Cyber Hub (2018–2019)
- Today
- Ten locations operating · six under fit-out
Mrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe
Directing the brand, designing its flagship
Rish is the brand’s Director, and he personally designed its flagship on Golf Course Road, Gurugram.
- Brand founded
- 2006, by Preet Saini, in Khan Market, New Delhi
- Role
- Director, since 2009
- Designed by Rish
- Golf Course Road flagship, Gurugram
- Twentieth anniversary
- 30 September 2026
Breakthrough Design Studio
From designing rooms to developing whole businesses
Through the studio, the work widened from designing rooms to developing whole hospitality businesses. Uptown Escape in Guwahati, a café by day and a cocktail bar by night, was conceived and developed in full in 2019. In 2025 the studio repositioned Nuts & Brew, an established Guwahati brewery, for a new generation of guests. Ālaya Café & Bar in Shillong followed in 2026, taken from concept to opening as one engagement that covered design, brand, food and beverage, operations, training, the website and social media.
Breakthrough Design Studio is operator-led, which means a design decision is weighed against covers, staffing, margin and service as well as against how the room looks. Based in Gurgaon, it works across Delhi NCR and takes on selected projects elsewhere in India.
- Established
- 2018
- Role
- Founder & Director
- Based in
- Gurgaon, working across Delhi NCR and India
Bars, beer and microbreweries
Bars and breweries planned around how they trade
Underdoggs put bars at the centre of Rish’s work from the start. A sports bar trades on its bar, so the speed of service at peak, the layout of the stations and back bar, and the route from order to glass are design questions as much as operating ones.
Two of the Underdoggs venues he designed, in Ludhiana and Jalandhar, opened in 2017 as Underdoggs Brewery & Kitchen brewpubs.
At Nuts & Brew, an established Guwahati brewery, the 2025 BDS repositioning expanded the beer programme from four beers on tap to eight, alongside new interiors, a redesigned food programme, new menus and new uniforms. With eight taps the brewery can broaden its range, rotate beers, offer tastings and flights, and give regulars a reason to come back for something new. The same experience underpins the studio’s Bars & Breweries work.
Photography and creative direction
Rish also photographs hospitality work and art-directs how it is presented. For a designer it is a practical discipline: looking at a room through a lens shows quickly whether its light, materials and sightlines hold together.
A new venue is often seen in photographs before anyone visits it, so how it is photographed belongs with how it is designed. At BDS that thinking carries into brand, marketing and social media direction, which at Ālaya Café & Bar were part of the same engagement as the design and the website.
AI for Hospitality
Rish’s operating experience now also shapes his work with AI. He applies it across his businesses and hospitality projects to organise knowledge, strengthen systems and reduce repetitive work. Through AI for Hospitality, he shares practical methods and resources, and offers private advisory to restaurant, bar and café owners who want to apply AI in their own businesses.
Visit aiforhospitality.in (opens in a new tab)Private AI advisory with Rish (opens in a new tab)
Press & recognition
Selected recognition
Each item names who it belongs to. The awards belong to the brands named, not to BDS.
Awards to the brands he leads
- 2026Best Western Casual Dining, Times Food & Nightlife Awards GurugramAward · The Times of IndiaMrs Kaur’s Bakery & Cafe, Gurugram
- 2024Best Live Screening Bars, EazyDiner Foodie Awards Delhi NCRAward · EazyDiner (opens in a new tab)Underdoggs, Worldmark 2, Aerocity
- 2024Best Restaurant Theme, Indian Restaurant AwardsAward · Indian Restaurant Congress (opens in a new tab)Underdoggs
- 2016Best Sports Bar (national), India Nightlife Convention & AwardsAward · INCA, an NRAI initiative (opens in a new tab)Underdoggs
- 2012Best Restro-Pub of the Year, Indian Restaurant AwardsAward · Indian Restaurant Congress (opens in a new tab)Underdoggs
Insights by Rish
Rish writes about the decisions that shape a restaurant before it opens and long after: the concept, the room, the dayparts and the realities of service.
- Restaurant DevelopmentWhy a Restaurant Concept Should Come Before the InteriorThe interior is the most visible decision in a new restaurant and one of the hardest to reverse, so it should express the concept rather than decide it.
- Hospitality DesignCafe by Day, Cocktail Bar by Night: Designing Around DaypartsAn all-day venue puts more of its rent to work, but only if the menu, the bar, the room and the team are planned for every part of the day from the start.
- OperationsRestaurant Design From the Operator’s Side of the TableGuests judge a restaurant over one evening, while the team that runs it lives with its design for years, so a drawing has to be tested against both.
Start a conversation
Clients work with Rish through Breakthrough Design Studio, which is selective about the projects it takes on. Every engagement starts with the business you want to build. Enquiries about speaking, media and collaboration are welcome too.
Or call +91 98187 00006