Overview

Ten years ago, I returned to India after nearly two decades in the USA. In the interim, I set up a public relations consulting business that today has two offices - in Delhi and Bombay, fifty staff and a history of serving clients as diverse as Pepsi, Citibank, Boeing, Enron, Microsoft, Intel, Rolls-Royce, British Telecom, Nokia, Alcatel, STAR TV, MTV, NBC, to name a few.

Consulting in the public relations area was unknown in India until then. Most of the major companies including government-owned public sector firms and the small but lucrative private companies - Indian as well as multinational - had public relations operations. Their job was to ensure that their management's voice was heard in the highly restrictive Indian business environment. Above all, the corporate public relations departments competed with advertising agencies that simply bought space or time in the media. They did it by offering inducements and favours. Their approach did not differentiate between commanding editorial attention and buying space or time in the media. In such a milieu, a professional consulting firm such as the one I set up had a lonely furrow to plough. Mercifully, at just about the time my firm opened for business, new and exciting multinational companies started up operations in India. In their scheme of things, retaining external public relations consultants was right up there with the need to hire a law firm and an accountancy firm.

My Indian sojourn began at the end of 1987 when...