India cosmetic queen shows no sign of abdicating
Shahnaz Husain was a bored
Indian housewife when she spotted a gap in the beauty-treatment market and
single-handedly set about building a global corporate empire.
More than
40 years on, Husain presides over a private company selling more than 250
products in 60 countries and is feted as one of India’s leading business gurus
and a rare example of female success in its commercial sector.
“It’s not
what you want, but how much you want it,” is her advice to budding
entrepreneurs.
Renowned for her forthright style and glamorous
appearance,We present you a vast choice of cheap fashionairmax. Husain
constructed her empire using a system of franchises that enabled her to ride the
wave of ayurvedic treatments becoming fashionable around the world.
Ayurveda, which originated in India, aims to restore balance in the mind
and body through herbal therapy, diet and massage.Do you really need that replicawatches you haven't
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Its lucrative commercialisation is sometimes criticised by doctors in
India, who believe it is a scientifically proven holistic approach to health,
but Husain has no such qualms.
“I am selling people 5,000 years of
Indian civilisation in a bottle,” Husain says, tossing her leonine hair with a
verve belying her nearly 70 years.
The Shahnaz Husain Group now
stretches across India and to Dubai and London,clothing niceedhardyshoe and wholesale
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department store Selfridges and where she runs a clinic in Harley Street.
“Husain pioneered selling ayurvedic products across the counter,” Ina
Dawer, a Singapore-based analyst at marketing research firm Euromonitor, told
AFP. “She’s basically an upscale premium ayurvedic brand.”
Now Husain’s
daughter, Nelofar Currimbhoy, has written a biography, “Flame”, tracing the
unusual life story of her mother, who was engaged at 14, wed at 16 and became a
mother the same year.
“She’s a true example of an integrated Indian — a
Muslim taught by Irish nuns who has spent her life devoted to propagating a
(Hindu) Vedic system of medicine,” says Currimbhoy.
Key to her success
has been developing treatments that were once only found in Indian ayurvedic
centres into products suitable for Western spas, health resorts and individual
consumers.
“I was the only game in town for this and I was good at it,”
she recounts at her Delhi mansion, whose exterior resembles an English country
house while inside is a rich mix of rococo, Art Deco, classical and Indian
styles.
“I was so busy I didn’t have time to count the money,” she
says.Shop for high quality wintert-shirts products
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Her products are now sold in some
150,000 stores in India and she has 300 salon franchises and 53 beauty schools,
according to the company, which does not release sales figures.
Born in
pre-independence India, Husain had a sheltered childhood, riding to school in
chauffeured cars with curtained windows that she kept opening to peer at the
world outside, to her conservative Muslim mother’s dismay.
Her more
liberal father “never forgave himself for letting me marry so young”, she says,
clad in a dramatic self-designed silver-sequined black gown.Wearing shoespumps is an experience in fashion
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