His grandfather was one of its biggest customers; his heir now plans Louis Vuitton's market strategies. There are probably a few people who do not know or have not heard of Tikka Shatrujit Singh, but last week, at Threesixty at The Oberoi Delhi, they weren't in evidence. Of course, the reason might well be that only metres away is the Louis Vuitton store, located off the hotel lobby, the first to open in India. The Tikka (which, for those of you who don't follow royal genealogy, means the heir apparent) is advisor to the luxury LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) group, and has been at the forefront of the luxury group's foray into the Indian market.
The Tikka might well have been born to the job. His inheritance, after all, would have been the state of Kapurthala had Indian history played out differently. He dresses nattily rather than royally (as his counterparts in, say, Rajasthan, are wont to), which might actually be a blessing in disguise considering some of his ancestors posed for pictures in effete costumes more suited to the French court than Punjab's more masculine durbars.
But there you have Kapurthala at a glance, a small but wealthy kingdom in Punjab that was ruled by the descendants of "Nawab" Jassa Singh Ahluwalia who, in 1750, was "elected and anointed" as the Emperor of the Sikh Community by the Khalsa, and which went on to adopt French architecture and culture as its own. "We," says Shatrujit Singh somewhat affectedly, "were sophisticates."
He's ordered well for himself: a platter of sushi including prawns, which he manoeuvres expertly into the soy-and-wasabi dip using chopsticks, followed by a portion of murgh biryani. My choice, somewhat practically (since I must take notes) is the coffee shop's brilliant pepperoni pizza, though the portion is too large and I'm distraught that good manners restrain me from having it bagged to take back to office.
But back to Tikka who is treating our lunch as a history lesson. It's clear he's smitten with his grandfather, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh. Many considered him decadent, but his grandson would probably dismiss any such allegations as word play by the less sophisticated. The maharaja who ruled from 1872 to 1949, the Tikka is now telling me, "modernised Kapurthala, made education free for girls, brought in industries", and "also practised secular beliefs, building a mosque (designed like the one in Morocco), a church, a gurdwara and a Hindu temple".
When you're to the manor born, it's difficult to imagine a life where you might have to do without a few luxuries "" such as hundreds of servants, for instance, or going on shikar , toodling off to the chateau in Mussoorie to spend summer vacations and so on. The Tikka studied (like his son now) at Doon School, but with the princely privileges being withdrawn in 1972, "it was a wake up call, especially since my friends, who were from business backgrounds, pointed me towards the corporate world".
For the poor little rich boy, the notion of working was alien, but softened somewhat because he began with a bank in New York, went on to Hong Kong, Zurich and London ("That's what made me very practical," he now acknowledges) before returning to India for two reasons. The first was emotional "" a younger sibling had died in a car crash, and the Tikka felt the need to be closer to his roots); the second more practical "" an offer from the LVMH group to be its advisor for its India operations.
No one could be more suited for the job that he now holds. Maharaja Jagatjit Singh was one of the largest customers for Moet et Chandon, as also Louis Vuitton, and for his grandson to plan the group's "entry strategies, locations, communications and marketing" couldn't have been too difficult. Still, Shatrujit Singh says his days are full "with what I'm doing in Kapurthala and with my corporate life".
What is he doing in Kapurthala? Unlike Rajasthan and some other states, Punjab has not taken the initiative in tourism, and so the Tikka is hoping to somehow recover the palace that once belonged to his grandfather and is now a Sainik School, and convert it (perhaps with LVMH as partner) into a destination resort or spa. But what's he's been doing these past five years is celebrate Jassa Singh's birth anniversary in May with a kirtan durbar to which the best raagis are invited to perform for an audience of "some 20,000-30,000 people for whom the gurdwara is lit up," while he's still trying to work out the best way to celebrate Jagatjit Singh's birth anniversary "as some sort of secular event".
Our meal is over, we're having coffee "" his is, correctly (his grandfather would have been so proud!) a single shot of espresso "" and discussing the business of luxury brands, the value of which he estimates at a potential Rs 65,000 crore. "I'm here to influence changes," he explains, "to create the environment for luxury stores, to create luxury malls on high streets." And are the developers responding? "In the next couple of years," he says, "you'll see exciting changes." That includes LVMH moving more of its star brands to India "" Dior, Fendi, Celine, Loewe, Kenzo, Givenchy, DKNY "" "in the short term in hotels". Currently, there are Louis Vuitton stores only in Delhi and Mumbai, but the Tikka says the group will add "one more Vuitton store in Delhi and Mumbai each next year, and also the first one in Bangalore, following which we hope to be in Chennai, Hyderabad and Chandigarh."
His immediate plans include training human resource elements to take on the anticipated growth, on the one hand, and to spearhead the renaissance of Kapurthala's cultural and architectural heritage, on the other. And? "I'm planning," he says, "my son's 18th birthday as a big ceremony in Kapurthala," though it's still two years away. Clearly, you might take the royals out of Kapurthala, but you can't take Kapurthala out of its royals.
