Rohit Khanna of Creative Info Graphics has jumped from one job to another during a short but eventful career. Halfway through college he decided to switch courses and took the all-India entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Hotel Management. He made it into the Ahmedabad-based institute and joined the Park Sheraton in Chennai soon after graduating.
However, he did not stay in that job for long and moved to Delhi. The next stop was in a courier company. In 1996, he joined Modicare.
In 2000, he set up Creative Info Graphics with an initial investment of Rs 1 lakh. Creative is a marketing communication agency that works towards establishing and strengthening the brand identities of its clients.
Last year it posted a turnover of Rs 1.5 crore.
I was the black sheep of the family. My father was in the defence forces and my younger brother was very good at studies. I, on the other hand, could never settle down in one thing. I was in the second year of college when I decided to take the all-India entrance for the Indian Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM). This exam is taken by students after class XII. So, in that sense I was two years late. Anyway, I cleared it and joined IIHM, Ahmedabad.
I did pretty well in the course and on graduating in 1991, got a job with Park Sheraton, Chennai.
Work was tough and I was putting in nearly 14 hours to 16 hours a day.
My stipend, however, was only Rs 1,000 per month. I figured that I could earn more by moving to Delhi. So, I quit that job and moved to Delhi in search of a better paying job.
I saw an advertisement for the job of a sales assistant in a courier company. I went for the interview and came out with a Rs 1,800 per month job in hand. Within a few months my boss moved to another company and took me with him. I worked there for a few years and then joined Modicare in 1996.
I did really well there and in 2000, when I quit, I was the regional sales manager for north India.
I quit Modicare after a fight with my boss over a professional issue. So, suddenly I had no job and I decided that the only thing for me to do was to start something on my own.
While at Modicare I had done a lot of designing and content writing for direct mailers and other publicity material.
We generally did not hire outside agencies and even when we did we felt that the communication was not always very clear.
I realised that there was no agency, which besides being a design agency, was also a partner in the marketing activities of the company. An agency that worked not just on the face value but went in-depth to understand all the marketing communication needs of the company and created customised solutions. That is how Creative was born.
My first client was Amway. I undertook a project whereby I was translating a lot of their communication into vernacular languages. In fact, I set up Creative when they gave me an advance cheque of Rs 1 lakh. I opened a bank account and bought a computer.
Today I
