Radhika Piramal's Journey

Mumbai

LGBTQ is a section of our society which is fighting for its  rights to live with diginity and pride . They demand that in case they think in a different way,  not in tune with the society's thought process, they should not be discriminated.Now there are  Queer Film Festivals, Gay Parades and protests marches world over to press the point.But still people rarely come out  to tell their family,  friends, , colleagues and society in general that they have different sexual preference.

Yesterday, I encountered such a courageous 40+ lady Radhika Piramal. She did not hide her sexual preference and fought to live her life with  her conviction.She belongs to leading industrial Piramal clan. She is currently Managing Director of VIP Industries.

 In last ten years she fought on two different front. First, to reinforce her family's luggage brand called VIP. With her sheer guts, conviction and hard-work, she turned around the company, the sales are swelled almost 15 times in this short span.She also fought personal battle to gain acceptance to her sexual preference.

She was at Grand Hyat, Santacruz East today to deliver the keynote address at the 12th annual Pitch CMO Summit. Radhika spoke on the topic of truth and transparency in the marketplace and in life with heart.

Radhika began with sharing her mantras for maintaining a brand image that is authentic and honest and how those very mantras played a key role in her life.

Radhika returned to her family business of running VIP Industries in 2010 when the company was going through a rough patch. In the time that she was away from India studying and working abroad, VIP as a brand had lost relevance among the youth of India and making the brand relevant again, especially to people under 30 was her agenda.

She said, “We launched four brands - Caprese, handbag range for women, Skybags backpacks range for youth, Carlton premium range travel bags, and Aristocrat bags for the value for money conscious customers. Even though we were the market leader, we were not doing well in the premium segment. The goal was to change the flagship brand and then do something more,”  The aspect about the brands that made it authentic was the customer segment each of the brands was targeting,

Her journey was no so simple,  she received a lot of internal objection for launching multiple brands that seemed to be cannibalizing   on the market of other VIP brands. “My attitude is if you are scared of losing share against yourself then you will never beat competition.”

She also said that keeping the marketing communication consistent kept the brand authentic. For example, Carlton, a company that was acquired by VIP, is not promoted as a VIP product. Carlton bags are ‘imported and marketed in India’, and they come with great legacy, she said. “It would not be authentic to call Carlton bags to be from the house of VIP, it would not be true to the history of the brand,” she said.

She said that while there is still a lot to be done with regard to differentiation in the market, as far as authenticity is concerned, she was satisfied with the performance of the brand. After Piramal took over, VIP Industries has seen a massive increment in its market cap. It has gone from Rs 140 cr to Rs 2100 cr and the EBITDA jumped from 3% in 2008-09 to 9% in 2015-16. She also added that promoting meritocracy in a family business also adds authenticity to the brand within the organisation.

Learning the skills of critical thinking, persuasion, lobbying, and getting comfortable with solitude further helped her make VIP an authentic brand to reckon with from the shop floor to the marketplace, she added.

She also talked with the same honesty on her own life journey.

Right from her childhood days, she felt that she was different, Tomboyish, Dominant. But this has developed her personality to live alone. She has gone to Oxford after her 12th, there she saw a very different way of  teaching, to make student an independent person not just to mug up text books. From there she had gone to Harvard, again a very different Institute where your illustrious family background did not count a bit. These two iconic institutions helped  her to be an independent personality.

   She tells about Tim Cook . When he succeeded the late Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO, he also declared that he was proud to be gay. Cook wasn’t in the closet all these years. He had simply managed to strike a balance between his work and his personal life which includes his sexuality. In deference to Martin Luther King’s famous question, “What are you doing for others?”, Cook described his trade-off with his own privacy. It was potentially helpful to other young people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality.

Radhika  married her partner in London in 2011. When she conveyed her decision to her family, they were shocked, but family bonds were very strong , this  gave her confidence. Like Cook, Piramal was also extremely cautious about her private life, but feels publicly embracing her identity would help counter “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation” at home and the workplace for many LGBT+ persons in India.

While Tim Cook’s coming out was followed closely by the SCOTUS ruling in favour of marriage equality, its Indian counterpart has failed Radhika Piramal and other ‘out’ or closeted individuals by staying section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes homosexuality. Which is why queer visibility in the Indian context becomes all the more important when challenging regressive and outmoded laws and attitudes that deny citizens a right to their own bodies and sexual expression. When a high-profile business-person like Piramal comes out, the first wall of silence is broken down. The blinders are removed. A conversation can begin – not just about LGBT+ sensitive company policies but also about demanding that the state uphold equal rights for every citizen.

For many in India, being closeted is akin to self-preservation. Without downplaying how difficult coming out must have been for both Pirmal and Cook, not everyone has the privileges they do. What’s important is that they’re using their privilege to talk about the existence and rights of people of alternate sexualities.

The dominant view of queer people typecasts them as sexual deviants, suffering some kind of mental and physical illness, and in dire need of medical intervention. But queer people have always been about more than their bodies, and the attempt to compress them into just their sexuality is a ridiculous one. Certainly, one has to be careful of falling into the trap of justifying queer existence only through their economic output and value, but seeing queer people in positions of authority and success can be extremely empowering for the community at large, which is essentially Cook’s earlier argument. One of America’s big radio satellite services was founded by Martine Rothblatt, America’s highest paid transgender CEO. Imagine what that can do for young trans teens’ confidence and self-acceptance!


Radhika Piramal’s decision to declare her sexuality marks another important phase of India’s ongoing LGBT history. Her actions may give more people the strength to claim who they are, and, even better, more people the understanding to accept them as they are.