Promotion concerns top worry list

Brand India has not only established itself, but has also developed as a good manufacturing and supply base. But Indians do have a long way to go in promoting their brands on global shores, said speakers at the panel discussion on “Developing India as a World Class Supply base for Luxury Houses” on the second day of the Hindustan Times Luxury Conference.

Hemant Sagar, an international fashion designer who has moved back to India, said: "Indians have to come out confidently and push themselves ahead and also have a good strategy in place to become successful."

Asked if India is just a back-end destination for international designers, Sunil Sethi, CEO of Alliance Merchandising Company that promotes Indian designs abroad, replied it was not so.

"We have created a platform in the global arena for Indian designers to showcase their work. Our efforts, which began when we took a set of designers to run a Bollywood-theme India promotion in UK's Selfridges in 2002, have continued. In the last four years, Indian designers have been promoted in Italy, Israel, Thailand and Moscow. Fashion designers Ashish Soni and Sabyasachi Mukherjee's clothes are being sold in Selfridges, he pointed out.