[2][3][4] Oberoi was also active in politics and was a member of both houses of the Parliament of India during his poltical career.

The manager of The Cecil, Ernest Clarke and his wife Gertrude took a great liking to the honesty of a hardworking young Oberoi.

[11] Later, Oberoi overtime acquired shares of Associated Hotels of India (AHI), a group that owned variously hotels including the Cecil and Corstophans in Shimla, Maidens and The Imperial in Delhi, and other properties in Lahore, Murree, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar.

[11] He managed to fund his acquisition of AHI and avoid financial ruin from his earlier The Grand Hotel acquisition through strategically offering the British quartermaster general, during World War II, affordable rates to accommodate troops passing through Calcutta on their way to the Burma front.

[13] The Oberoi Group, founded in 1934, employed about 12,000 people worldwide and owned and managed about thirty hotels and five luxury cruisers as of 2012[update].

In 1966, he also established The Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development, which is now regarded as one of Asia's top institutions for hospitality education.

Oberoi was presented with the title Rai Bahadur (pater familiae) by the British Raj government in 1943.

In his own autobiographical sketch – How M S Oberoi became India's greatest hotelier,[18] however, he gave 1900 as his official birth year, a fact attesting to his having lived to 101.

"[19][20] Oberoi married Ishran Devi in 1920, the daughter of Shri Ushnak Rai belonging to his village.