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| Systems Girl |
| Kishore Singh / New Delhi Sep 05, 2009, 00:52 IST |
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Pushpanjali Sharma left the family Ayurveda business to manage operations for FMCG majors before plunging into the luxury industry, writes Kishore Singh
T hird generation or not, you can hardly be faulted for being taken aback by Baidynath scion, Pushpanjali Sharma, whose grandfather, in 1917, laid the foundations of this Ayurvedic firm that has since grown from Patna to 10 manufacturing centres and 1,600 employees, manufacturing 700 products. Not that Sharma — who has hardly led a cloistered life — is keen to leverage the family heritage, leaving that to her father, uncles, brothers and cousins to manage.
She may have been born with a dose of chyawanprash in a silver spoon, but 32-year-old Sharma can, at least, claim to be at that pivot of Indian upbringing that combines cosmopolitanism with tradition. She’s as deft with her chopsticks and sushi as she is practicing religious rituals, goes horse riding but reads books on spirituality, runs her own company but believes in the theory of karma, practices meditation, is a certified skydiver, loves dogs, and is convinced there are angels watching out for her. “I have a fabulous life,” she says, “I feel very blessed.” That includes zipping on the highway in a Mercedes SLK — her other car is a BMW, and for a while in America she raced cars on the amateur circuit — or, when she’s feeling low, dancing: “That fixes everything for me,” she says.
Sharma is new still to the entrepreneurial world in India, her working experience, for the longest time ever, being in the US, where she started work at electronics store major Circuit City, after doing her Masters from the University of Richmond, Virginia. Her next break came when, speaking at the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, where she volunteered, she was offered an interview at Pepsi’s headquarters, also in Richmond, and bagged the position of an industry analyst. “Pepsi’s best team is in Virginia because it’s their cash cow,” she
remembers nostalgically, “my mentors there were fantastic,” and she soon proved herself, winning three promotions in a matter of years. “I had nothing to do but work,” she smiles, “and to them neither age, sex nor nationality mattered, they were just result driven.”
We’re having coffee at a business centre, which seems her natural environment, so it’s difficult to understand why when she was doing so well, she chose to chuck it up to come back home. “On a visit to India, I saw my father had aged,” she says, “so I packed my bags and returned to the family.” But not to the family business. “Corporate America brings out the best in you, but you also burn out,” she shrugs, so she went on a long sabbatical, travelling around the world and the country, getting her work-life balance in some sort of equilibrium again.
That was when Dernier Cri Luxueux — its clients include royalty and aristocracy, celebrities, industrialists and business groups — picked her to head their Asia-Pacific operations, though it was a business she knew little about. It wasn’t just the group’s customers who kept a low profile, its products too, limited editions created specifically for it by the world’s leading luxury brands, were never retailed.
“I was very young,” Sharma permits herself a delicate laugh, “so there was friction, and resistance.” On her part, she put in operating systems the company had never experienced before, as a result of which there was a 400 per cent increase in the business in her region — bonuses that year were huge, and she was offered the role of the global chief operating officer. Though she accepted it, it was only for a period of three months. “There was really no more work to be done,” she says.
She now heads her own company, Pivotul, to facilitate brands coming to India, acting as a strategic advisor, assisting in the negotiations and actioning the plans as a business partner. “It makes sense for them as it’s more cost-effective than hiring so many experts of their own.”
The first client that signed her on was Burberry, for which she is a brand consultant, and luxury automobiles Bentley and Lamborghini, for both of whom she is brand director. Other tie-ups with the DS and Al-Rashid groups are likely on the anvil. But what skills does she bring to luxury brands, given her FMCG experience? “FMCG training is good for everything,” Sharma points out, stressing the need for systems, monitoring traffic flow through stores, increasing stock availability ratios, managing the logistics of customs clearance and freight forwarding. “I’m extremely pushy,” she explains her modus operandi simply.
As she trains her team to experience luxury, works on visual merchandising with her clients, and plans a strategy for taking Indian brands and designers global, there’s one thing that irks Sharma more than most others, and that’s the selfishness of the rich. “Coimbatore exports textile machinery worth $1 billion annually,” she says, “but none of that wealth trickles down to the people there. It’s extremely important to give something back to the people. Fair share” — she makes the distinction from just plain philanthropy — “is very important.”
That’s her spiritual side kicking in. Or maybe, as she says, “I’ve only met very good people in my life, I come across them all the time.” What’s that they say about birds of a feather?
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