Rajan Madhu, the president of House of Influence, is a post graduate in Russian from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and started his career in 1974 as an interpreter at Unesco. However, a few years later, he switched tracks to join an export house and then an apparel company.
In 1987, Madhu decided to set up his own ready-made garment export house. With an initial investment of Rs 15,000, which was used to purchase three sewing machines and hire tailors, Madhu set up Influence. Within three years, it became a government-recognised export house with a turnover of Rs 3 crore.
Since then there has been no looking back and today the House of Influence Group has nine companies in fields as diversified as pharmaceuticals, travel and tourism, event management, modelling and TV software. The group posted a turnover of Rs 130 crore in 2000-01.
I belong to a family of professionals and business was considered taboo. Nobody had ever thought of setting a up a business. However, in 1987, I decided to venture out on my own. By this time I had already worked with different export houses and apparel companies. Setting up an export house thus made sense. Initially, I used to buy old copies of Vogue and Cosmopolitan and copy designs from there