When 38-year-old Aradhana Chand got the call to appear on one of France’s leading national television channels to feature as a glamorous, luxury-brand toting representative of ‘new India’, no one was more surprised than her. “My wardrobe has designer wear, but I’m very low key,” she says. “I wondered how they came to choose me.”
Her husband Gautam is more circumspect. “I knew she was the right choice. The show’s about the lives of women in different parts of the world who symbolise luxury, in order to find out how countries perceive luxury. Aradhana is interested in style, she sports fashion not for the brands or statements she might be making but because she enjoys it.”
For local celebrity spotters, Gautam and Aradhana may not have instant recall value, but they both perhaps represent that elusive construct that outsiders would attempt to term ‘new’ India…a global outlook (Gautam is the former President of the Wharton Alumni Association of India, an alumnus of the business school that boasts corporate royalty of the likes of Anil Ambani, Keshub Mahindra, the younger Godrej’s. He held the post for seven years), successful (we’ll get to that), young…and yet consciously understated.
“The television team from France mentioned that many there still view luxury in India as that pertaining only to maharajas and palaces,” Aradhana explains. “This would break that perception.” Her work as a stylist brings her celebrity clientele, but she is hesitant to provide names. She doesn’t attend fashion weeks, but, as is customary for special clients, is offered private showings from favoured couture houses when she travels abroad. So the French TV show, focusing on high fashion and lifestyle, and hosted by Emannuel Chain (touted as one of France’s biggest names in television journalism) has undertaken to profile Aradhana along with names like fashion czar John Galliano and French countess Sandrine de Montmort.
Gautam may not follow fashion quite as closely as his wife, but the financial world could well be called his oyster — he is the man who created, owns and manages the Skindia GDR index, the third most widely displayed Indian stock market index. “Except for Dow Jones, most other major global indexes now seem to be following the variations in index creation methodology that I introduced in 1994,” he says. And he is choosing to build on initial success: “In August 2009 I applied for a provisional patent for a new index methodology I’ve created, which will provide an alternate methodology for global index creation. Because markets have changed. These days investors do not only invest where they live, they invest globally. Indexes have not kept pace. My new index tracks investor groups as opposed to tracking geographical markets.” He may be the emerging wunderkind in the financial ambit but that does not mean his wife’s interests are not his. “I do follow fashion,” he smiles “I like clothes by Hugo Boss.” Then cheekily, looking at his wife, “It is ‘Boss’, isn’t it?!”
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