ABOUT ABHAY GUPTA
This story does not begin in a boardroom, or a luxury atelier. It begins in the engine room of a merchant vessel.
I graduated DMET in 1978 and went to sea as a fifth engineer. By 1983 I was a Chief Engineer, and I sailed as one until 1990 — twelve years running complex systems under pressure, in every weather the ocean offers, across the ports of the world.
When I came ashore in 1990, Stencil Apparel had placed an advertisement seeking — of all things — a marine engineer. I went to meet them out of curiosity. The plant they were importing, the owner explained, was too complex for a single-stream engineer; Lacoste’s parent team in France had advised them to recruit a marine engineer, whose training spans every system on a ship. As GM Manufacturing, I ran the three plants — a thousand workers — that made Lacoste in India and for world markets, trained in technology transfer at Brother Industries, Japan.
“Abhay was brought in for his technical expertise and his ‘make it happen attitude’ which he brought from his previous industry — the Merchant Navy… Even though he was new to the industry at that time his grasp of the job at hand was tremendous.”— Shammy Jacob, colleague at Stencil (early 1990s)
Gruppo Marzotto recruited me next: six months in Italy leading a team of forty technicians through the transfer of Italian ready-to-wear suiting technology — the shop floor at Marzotto’s Mestre facility, the engineering and planning rooms at their Valdagno headquarters — after which the entire plant was packed, dispatched and landed in India under my supervision. The marine engineer, it turned out, knew how to move cargo across oceans.
That plant became India’s first state-of-the-art facility for premium ready-to-wear suiting — the plant behind GIVO. In 1996 I founded my first consulting practice, APMS, guiding India’s exporters through the compliance transformation the world’s biggest brands demanded. Before I ever sold luxury, I learned how it is made.
I had been arguing since 2003 that India was Versace’s next market, at a point when the house had no intention of coming. In 2005 I structured the first pure-play franchise agreements for Versace Collection and Corneliani in India — negotiated simultaneously — and then crossed the table to execute them.
As Executive Director of Blues Clothing Company, I corporatised a single store into a forty-store retail operation spanning the Versace, Corneliani and Cadini franchises, Indian ethnic and tailoring formats, and international home brands — anchored by Blues Home, India’s biggest multi-brand home concept, built around Versace Home. Alongside, we created private labels of our own: Su Misura, and Bench & Bar for India’s legal profession.
In November 2011 I incorporated Luxury Connect, and we launched on the 29th of February, 2012 — a leap-day founding for a firm built on rare occasions. With it came Luxury Connect Business School, India’s first specialised luxury business school, now fourteen years old; Armando Branchini, founder of Fondazione Altagamma, endorsed its launch.
I wrote The Incredible Indian Luxury Bazaar to document a market the world kept misreading. My research has been published at the LVMH–SMU Luxury Research Conference in Singapore, and the frameworks that followed — from the Premium-versus-Luxury distinction to the Luxury Readiness Matrix — are now instruments the industry uses to read this market.
Today the work runs in two directions: global houses engage me to enter India correctly, and Indian founders engage me to build brands the world will take seriously. The doctrine beneath both has not changed since 1990: luxury brands are not launched. They are architected.
“I left the sea. But the sea never left the way I think.”
CAREER TIMELINE
DMET, Marine Engineering.
Merchant Navy. Fifth Engineer to Chief Engineer (1983); sailed as Chief Engineer until 1990.
GM Manufacturing, Stencil Apparel. Lacoste manufacturing licensee: three plants, 1,000 workers; technology transfer at Brother Industries, Japan.
VP Operations, KB+T Ltd (Marzotto SpA joint venture). Led technology transfer from Marzotto, Italy; built India’s first premium ready-to-wear suiting facility — the plant behind GIVO. Licensed production for Ferre on Marzotto technology, with a brief retail engagement.
Founder, APMS. Apparel production and compliance consulting for India’s export sector. Franchise partner, Oyzterbay jewellery. Co-founded the designer ethnic-wear house now known as Luxury Design Studio.
Executive Director, Blues Clothing Company. Structured India’s first pure-play franchise agreements for Versace Collection and Corneliani (2005); forty-store retail operation; Blues Home; Cadini licensing across 25 categories; private labels Su Misura and Bench & Bar. One season of Canali preceded the group’s later Corneliani association.
Founder & Chairman, Luxury Connect Pvt Ltd (incorporated November 2011; launched 29 February 2012) and Luxury Connect Business School. Author, The Incredible Indian Luxury Bazaar. Published researcher, LVMH–SMU Luxury Research Conference (2016, 2018).
President, Delhi NCR chapter, Centre for Education Growth & Research (CEGR).
