Tell Me How You Did It

Raw Mango is one of India's most important fashion labels, yet designer and founder Sanjay Garg say he finds the term 'fashion' limiting. In just over a decade since its launch, Garg has taken his textile-first fashion brand to great heights. Rural India is a perennial muse, and yet the label appeals to the young and modern Indian. Not only is Raw Mango about beautiful clothes in beautiful settings, but it has also come to be the cultural chronicler of our times.

The Gem Palace is easily India's oldest and most famous jewellery boutique. When tourists come to Jaipur, they want to see the royal City Palace and the Rambagh Palace, and the gorgeous jewellery store called Gem Palace. It has stood in the same spot since 1852, hosting Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Lady Mountbatten, Jacqueline Kennedy, Prince Charles and Lady Diana, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman and countless boldface names. Siddharth Kasliwal, the ninth generation of this heritage, tells us all about his legacy and his plans going forward.

When we speak of India's finest heritage hotels, we cannot escape the muted glamour of the Neemrana Group. Founder and director Aman Nath was among the first to discover old palaces, forts, havelis and bungalows, restore them lovingly, and turn them into immersive cultural spaces. His hotels have been featured in every major international design magazine and have hosted notaries from across the world. But most importantly, it has made us go back in time to when life was simpler and more glorious. More than three decades and 30 properties later, Nath says he's still looking for more.

Devita Saraf's is the most interesting tale of a woman in business in India. Raised in a traditional family, Saraf was determined on having the same goalposts her brother did and made the most of them. She joined her family's computer manufacturing business at 16 and was made head of marketing at 21. By 24, she sent her father a formal presentation and asked for a small loan. She launched VU TVs in 2006, and turned it into a Rs 1,000-crore company by 2019, making her the richest Indian woman under 40.

Juicy Chemistry is the story of a husband-wife team who started a small beauty business from their kitchen with just Rs 5,000 and their domestic staff as helping hands. In seven years, their e-commerce only ventures received funding of US $6.3 million, making it the largest in the e-commerce beauty space. Co-founder Megha Asher takes great pride in being ECOCERT certified for their sourcing from organic-certified farmers and suppliers and also receiving a Good Manufacturing Certificate for the company's commitment to sustainable practices and transparency.

'All Good, No Bad' has been the mantra for Raw Pressery from get-go. Of course it stood for its product, a clean-living inspired cold-pressed health juice using natural ingredients and no preservatives. But the mantra also came to be the founder Anuj Rakyan's life hack since he exited the company in 2020. Raw Pressery still remains a very fine brand, alone in its category, that disrupted our supermarket shelves and changed them forever. Rakyan is here telling us about the things he got right.

How can we talk about India's best businesses without talking of Bollywood: the world's largest film factory? One of India's most notable producers throws the spotlight on her craft, on why she thinks it's a privilege to be in cinema, and why making films top-lining women characters is important. Her last film, Veere Di Wedding, starred four women in lead roles and was rated 'A', still pulled in Rs 100 crore at the box office. Rhea Kapoor lets us into her glamorous, strong, and beautiful bubble.

Did you know consuming natural honey not only has immense health benefits but can also save the planet? When VIjaya Pastala started Under The Mango Tree in 2008, she wanted to help India's small farmers increase productivity, as a pollinating bee colony on an agricultural plot can add to the yield hugely, and allow them to sell the honey and enhance their livelihood. UTMT came to be India's only organic, single-origin, certified honey brand that sources from farmers' cooperatives via fair trade. Her not-for-profit arm, the UTMT Society, was recently awarded a grant of Rs 5 crore by the HCL Foundation for the excellent work it does.

Malaika Arora has traversed from being a model and an actor to a wellness entrepreneur to be taken very seriously. Her ventures include fashion, fitness and food, and she's built an entire ecosystem on being fit and glamorous. This, from a woman who dropped out of college to make a quick buck.

Alan Abraham is one of the most important names in the world of architecture and design, not only thanks to his exemplary work in multidisciplinary architecture and interior design but also urban planning and public work projects. His philosophy is simple: the urban and co-exist with the natural. His firm's pro bono arm Bombay Greenway project works on public spaces and parks to turn them into well-designed, citizen-friendly green places.