No business can survive for long without a vision; even if it does, it would be susceptible to every disruption and upheaval that generally comes in its business cycle. It needs a leader who has the capacity to translate, create that vision, or make it clearer and turn it into reality. The very essence of leadership is having a vision in the first place. Moreover, as you can’t blow an uncertain trumpet, it should be clearly articulated so that they can manage and lead people. A team led by a visionary leader with a clear direction knows what it can achieve and how far it can go.
In this special feature, our sister site, IndiaRetailing highlights the brand icons in India’s thriving fashion and lifestyle industry. This week, the spotlight is on…
Amrish Prakash Kumar, Creative Director, Ritu Kumar
Education
- MBA (August 2003 – May 2005) Marshall School of Business, U.S.C
- Bsc (Hon), Economics (October 1996 – July 1999) University of Bristol
Career history
- Ritu Kumar-Creative Director (2010 –Present)
- Mummy Daddy Media (Film production, Record Label)- Founder/Director (2006-Present)
- HDFC Bank E-commerce project team (Dec 1999 –Jan 2002)
Role & Responsibilities: Creative Director of Ritu Kumar and a board member
Strengths: Left and right brains at the same time. I can be analytical as well as creative.
Weaknesses Impatience, not the best delegator
Aspirations: Aspiration for the business is to create one of a kind iconic global brand.
Game Changing Retail Technologies: Certainly the advent of ecommerce and the linking of the content via social as well as digital directly on to commerce platforms is a huge change in fashion over the last decade. Although this has not come to fruition, yet but I do feel that as the data gets more enriched across a lot of platforms, AI will form a big part in molding preferences and changes more so than any kind of technologies have ever been able to do before.
Skills That Helped Him Succeed: On one side, I have a business degree and on the other side I have creative grounding by hands on work. I have some innate creative talent and analytically I am reasonably strong, these are the things that have helped me succeed.
On the Future of Industry: I have never seen such change happen in India before, consumerism and the advent of premiumisation, and the trading up is happening in the Indian fashion economy in a significant way. High value and high quality is now creating enough of a critical mass in order for brands to exist across the value spectrum at one time it used to be the only brands that could scale or were in value segment now that’s changed.
Learnings from His Career:
- Perseverance
- No detail is too small to be spared.
- And you can only lead if you know the job intimately yourself.
