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Harish Kathuria

"Born in May 1961 in the township of Faridabad, in close proximity of New Delhi, I am a qualified mechanical engineer. However the quirk of entrepreneurship in me led me to start an export of engineering products. But soon I discovered that for certain reasons, including the shape of economy in India and Europe at that time, we were not performing optimally. Instead we started receiving enquiries from overseas buyers regarding things like semi-precious stones and silver jewelry. Finding silver jewelry a promising field, I tried my hand successfully into it around 1985.

"We mostly design our products on our own - out of which around 40% are done by our own choice. The rest is custom-designed according to the choice of our buyers abroad. We also take the help of freelance designers in our work. Upholding the purity standard of silver is one of the important challenges in our work. Many silverware designers downgrade the quality by blending baser elements and bring a bad name not only to themselves but to our trading community. 'Till this time we have concentrated mostly on the overseas market. We participated for seven or eight years in the Hong Kong International Exhibition. But in recent years the exhibition has lost much of its sheen.

"I believe being in this trade, like in many other things, is an ongoing process of learning and teaching. While I keep on learning new techniques, and designs, I have also taught them to many others such as fresh graduates from different vocational institutes like National Institute of Fashion Technology who come to us as trainee.

"We would like to concentrate on the previously overlooked segment of domestic market apart from the overseas one, though not in the retail mode. The feedback of the domestic customer would be more prompt than one in the overseas. We are executing domestic corporate orders and have won acclaims from Taj Khazana, CIE etc. It would certainly be desirable that this business continues onwards in our family - but since my two children are still young it is pre-mature to comment on that."