A graduate of Georgetown university, where he majored in Biology and minored in Theology ("to understand why people think the way they do"), Shah's resume is peppered with interesting twists and turns.
A biologist is not the kind of person you'd imagine taking responsibility for India's fledgling fashion industry, but 37-year old Sujal Shah fits into his boss's shoes quite comfortably, albeit wearing brightly colored sneakers.
Better known as the head of fashion at IMG India, the global events management company that manages Mumbai's Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW), the Washington DC native speaks a mile a minute, barking out orders to subordinates, answering his phone, rifling through the plethora of papers on his desk, all the while providing lucid answers to a reporter's questions in the final hours leading up to the city's biggest fashion event.
"You know what they say about genius. It's organized chaos," he explains with a laugh, catching the look of amazement on my face.
Phew! If this is the pace required to execute the five-day fashion extravaganza taking place this week from September 17 to 21 at the Grand Hyatt hotel, Shah is clearly the right man for the job.
He's only been at the helm of Mumbai's Lakmé Fashion Week since November 2009, but it feels like he was born for the role.
Med school to Murjani Group
With what he calls his "East Village exec look" -- grizzly, slightly grayed beard, colorful Asics Onitsuka Tiger sneakers, unbuttoned shirt, ubiquitous jeans paired with either a vest or a blazer and those Diesel 55 rectangular shaped glasses, he looks every inch the dapper businessman navigating what some would consider the better organized, if not the most prestigious, of the two major fashion weeks in India.
And he enjoys this sartorial freedom too. "I did my stint with mainstream corporate America and now I have the luxury of being comfortable and playing around with color, mostly in my shoes. I like something with presence," reveals Shah.
Surprisingly, for someone who fell in love with fashion as a teenager, and did summer internships with fashion companies Anne Kline and Prada while at Columbia Business School, Shah meandered his way into the sartorial world.
Born to bonafide geniuses (his father is a rocket scientist at NASA and his mother an infectious diseases doctor in a Maryland hospital), Shah spent three months each year in Ahmedabad with relatives during his childhood. As a result, he is fluent in Gujarati, and his roots to India remain strong despite growing up in the United States.
A graduate of Georgetown, where he majored in Biology and minored in Theology ("to understand why people think the way they do"), Shah's resume is peppered with interesting twists and turns.
His 'past lives' include working in genetics and molecular biology as a researcher for the U.S. government's National Institute of Health, as a management consultant at Arthur Anderson doing projects for the CIA and the Pentagon, attending med school for a year, starting a medical practice billing company and a tech incubator, working as a business strategist and marketer for American Express Financial Services (where he worked with the very exclusive Centurion, aka, black card) before finally landing at the Murjani Group in Mumbai.
And although that sojourn was short lived, Shah admits being bitten by the India bug.
Mumbai, fashion frontier
"This is the Wild West," he says. "There's so much potential. After the Murjani stint I saw a big gap in the luxury liquidation space and worked on putting together a business plan for something along the lines of Gilt Group for India."
Private equity groups expressed interest but India's tricky multi-brand retail laws put the idea on the back burner.
In the meanwhile, Ravi Krishnan, head of IMG for South Asia and erstwhile face of LFW, approached Shah to help him with Lakmé Fashion Week. That was September 2009.
Shah jumped in feet first. A month later, he was asked to take over as head of fashion.
One of his first tasks was to help put together the joint venture 50-50 partnership between Reliance and IMG India. The other was to systematize and put in processes to ensure that the LFW machine became even better oiled.
"In this business, perception is reality. If anything goes wrong with fashion week, I'm the one to blame," he says.
"I'm a white board kind of guy. In my first meeting I took my team into a room and asked them to tell me everything we do at LFW. We mapped out 30 different verticals and assigned responsibilities and work plans so that everyone knew what had to be done by when.
"The biggest challenge is that no one takes responsibility for anything. So lesson number one for me was to teach people to take responsibility and lesson number two was to involve them in strategy."
At IMG, Shah has five direct reports but works closely with almost 300 people in the weeks leading up to LFW, including ushers, set designers, light people, choreographers, stylists, designers and so on.
He's involved in the most minute details, from seating to invitations to approving brochures. And yes, he readily admits that in India fashion is still very nascent.
A data guy, he realizes that there's a gap when the biggest buyers at LFW order between 50 to 100 units whereas in the United States, a typical buyer will put in orders for 10,000 pieces.
Yet, therein lies his challenge.
Shah is constantly looking at ways to improve the experience for both buyers and designers. He’s already increased the number of buyers attending between September 2009 and March 2010 by 64 percent, taking the total number up from 94 to 154, the majority of whom come from India.
And despite all the trappings of the fashion world, yes, he does date a model.
When asked his definition of success, Shah sits back, thinks carefully, and then disarmingly replies, "If my mom is proud."
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