Teaching shui biz

Later this month, September 29, to be precise, Raymond Lo, one of the more famous feng shui teachers, will be in Delhi to hold classes on various aspects of this esoteric art (or science, as the practitioners would have us believe).

But why would anyone want to learn how to balance energy sources? "One can take it up as a serious profession. It makes good business sense," says Priya Khanna, an expert practitioner, who is instrumental in bringing Lo to Delhi for his first visit.

Till early October, Lo will hold three classes to teach basic feng shui, four pillars of destiny (used to analyse the fortunes of an individual) and I ching divination. While the first two are three-day courses, the last one takes two days. Attending all three will cost over Rs 30,000 each.

Khanna says that similar lessons abroad cost about $3,000. But the investment is easy to recover "" once you start consulting, you can earn it back within a month, she points out. Bringing Lo to India is a one-off project for Khanna as "such a lot of what passes off as feng shui in India is trash". Lo according to her is "a true teacher who knows the traditional stuff".

Khanna hasn't done too badly herself. Based in Dubai, she chucked her job with a shipping company and took up feng shui consultancy full time in the early 1990s. The first few years were given to using the Net to advise her clients. Her initial investment on her website was around $15,000.

In 2000, she floated her own company Elements Fengshui. Currently she runs two shops or "studios" as she calls them, which retail feng shui paraphernalia in Dubai. The third one is to start operations later this year. She plans to open a fourth one, early next year, in Muscat.

Her turnover last year was around $220,000. And she sees her company growing at 15 per cent for the next few years. "I would love to set up shop either in Delhi or Mumbai. But real estate is so prohibitive here," she says.

Khanna comes to India every two months and claims to have a huge client base. Among them are Bollywood stars like Karisma Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia as well as companies such as Apollo Tyres, KDH Jewellers and Sona Steering.

In all she says she must have helped over 500 clients; a few of them return for further consultations. For Rs 25,000, Khanna will visit your house, do a destiny analysis and chart out the energy flows. Whatever products she prescribes cost extra.

What would be the total size of feng shui business in India? "It's difficult to guess the market size," she says adding that the three or four big shops in Delhi do business of around Rs 35,000 every day. And there is one in Mumbai that clocks Rs 75,000 a day. Money chimes?