They sold the large one to keep the small one

The question is not barefoot luxury. The question is why the people who kept the small company, by selling the large one, then left the small one too.

In the early 1990s Sonu Shivdasani bid for islands in Ari Atoll that other operators later made work. The bids failed. He had no bed contract with a tour operator. What he was offered instead was Kunfunadhoo, in Baa. Ahmed Jaleel had tried a resort there in the 1970s. It died because rough weather stopped the dhonis. Guests who had flown nine hours then lost days of a one-week package in Malé. Later developers walked away. Sonu took the lease from Veyne Reed, of the Australian company Treasure Island Enterprise. He and Eva Malmström built it with family money. Soneva Fushi opened in 1995. The name is the two of them, and fushi is the Dhivehi for island.

The flaw was the product

A boat could not be trusted, so the first answer was helicopters, chartered out of Bulgaria after the Soviet collapse, when the aircraft were cheap. Later the seaplane. The distance that had closed the first resort became the reason to come. That is a transfer, not a motto. Eva did the rooms: bathrooms open to the air, a shower under a banana tree, dinner with your feet in the sand. The comfort is Scandinavian, from years of being photographed in other people's landscapes. 'No shoes, no news' is the sentence. She is why the sentence had a floor.

By 2011 they were running two businesses. Soneva they owned. Six Senses and Evason they managed for other owners, and a board wanted one brand that could be sold without a conflict. In 2012 they sold Six Senses and kept Soneva, on the rule that the name would not be lent to a house they did not own. Jani opened in October 2016. In February 2025 the company said new renewable systems at Fushi and Jani would supply half the electricity and cut two million litres of diesel a year. That is an operation. It is not a mood board.

Jani: a Library page still says 2015. The house's own record says October 2016. We print the house.

Then they left that, too

KSL took a minority stake in November 2019 and control on 23 May 2025, by converting securities it already held. Neil Gallagher became chief executive. Sonu and Eva gave up every operational role. In September 2025 they told Travel + Leisure they were starting Sosei — rebirth, in Japanese — a company with a Japanese idea of wellness, and that they were looking at the Arctic, the European mountains, South Africa and Asia. Deals were hoped for by the end of that year. We will not print a hotel that has not been signed.

A September 2026 report of a Singapore court ordering a sale of Soneva Holdings is not linked on this page. The stake percentages and the price the founders asked are therefore not printed. The May 2025 change of control is the KSL release. Sosei is the Travel + Leisure interview.

What is left on the reef is the sentence, the jungle, and a company whose authors have gone. Book Fushi if you want the island that failed before it worked. Do not book it as a meeting with Sonu and Eva. They are not in the building.