By Radha Chadha | PGP 1981

(As told to Avantika Sukhia)

When I graduated from IIMA in 1981, I could not have imagined that I would one day call myself an author. 

Radha at IIMA in 1981, and now in 2026

My first job, straight out of campus, was at JWT. From there, I built a career in advertising over two decades, working with leading global agencies such as Ogilvy, Grey, and Bates Asia. My work took me across cities – Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi, Hong Kong – handling a wide range of countries, industries, brands, and consumer mindsets. Over the years, I worked with clients like HSBC, American Express, GlaxoSmithKline, British Airways, and many more. Eventually, I went on to found my own brand consultancy.

This was my ‘scripted’ career path, and it was an adrenaline-driven ride. I loved every minute of it. Yet beneath the surface, there was this niggling doubt: was I doing what I was born to do?! This doubt had its origins at IIMA too, sowed by none other than my classmate and later husband, Sanjeev. Fresh out of IIM, we had jobs in different cities, and I would write him a letter a day. Those letters convinced him that I was meant to be a writer, an idea that I then found ludicrous. But over the years, he kept at it, until I agreed to give ‘writing’ a serious shot.

It was the early 2000’s. We were in Hong Kong. My work took me to different cities in Asia, and I was amazed by the omnipresence of luxury brands everywhere. Even in my office, my secretary had a Louis Vuitton bag, while I, her boss, couldn’t dream of splurging that kind of money. What fascinated me was that it wasn’t just the rich who were buying luxury brands, but also people who could barely afford them. In fact, they were buying them in such large numbers that Asian consumers accounted for more than half the world’s luxury brand sales. What drove this burning desire, I wondered. Solving this puzzle got me into writing my first book, The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury. 

The book went on to become a bestseller and the go-to book for understanding luxury brands in Asia. My life changed. I suddenly had a string of speaking engagements across industries, from luxury brand companies such as Louis Vuitton and Tiffany, to investment banks like Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. 

I travelled extensively, from Tokyo to Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, London, Paris, New York, and many more. I spoke at a series of conferences held by the International Council of Shopping Centers, and delivered talks at educational institutions like Harvard Business School, London Business School, NIFT, and yes, of course, IIM Ahmedabad.

The book also led to a long-running column in Mint, where I wrote about luxury brands for over a decade. Looking back, this transition from corporate professional to writer and columnist was my first step into an ‘unscripted’ career. 

However, nothing quite prepared me for my most recent book: The Maker of Filmmakers: How Jagat Murari and FTII Changed Indian Cinema Forever. The origins of this book lie not in the world of brands, but in something far more personal – my father, Jagat Murari. My father was a celebrated documentary filmmaker and the founding force behind the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. It was here that he nurtured generations of pathbreaking filmmakers – Jaya Bachchan and Shabana Azmi, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Subhash Ghai, Shatrughan Sinha and Mani Kaul, and many other cinema legends. His alumni became the leading names of Bollywood and beyond. They spearheaded the Indian New Wave, kick-started regional language cinema, and helped usher television into the country. He had built the ‘IIMA’ of Cinema!

Some years after my father passed away, my mother asked me to help clear his papers at their home in Pune. There, I found three Godrej cupboards packed with his diaries, files, scripts, photographs, and letters – collected over a lifetime of making documentaries and working at FTII, the National Film Archive of India, and the Directorate of Film Festivals. As I started going through them, I realised I was holding history in my hands. I felt compelled to tell his story, and that of the iconic film school he built.

So began an entirely new writing journey. I relied on extensive research drawn from my father’s writings, documents, and government records; conducted over a hundred interviews with his students and colleagues; and pieced together the events for an accurate picture of the time. There were moments of discovery that felt almost surreal – my father’s path intersected with icons like Satyajit Ray and David Lean, Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Zedong, Indira Gandhi, Raj Kapoor, and more. I witnessed him not just as a parent, but as a visionary who helped make Indian cinema the global powerhouse it is today.

The book was published a few months back by Penguin. It was launched at FTII – the place where I spent my childhood – with many of my father’s former students in attendance. My ‘unscripted career’ had brought me full circle home.

If there’s one lesson I would take from this journey, it’s this: careers do not always follow a linear or predictable path. The most meaningful transitions come from unexpected detours that take you to incredible places of discovery. Sometimes, the stories we’re meant to tell are the ones we never set out to write.

Author Bio:

Radha Chadha is an author, columnist, and one of Asia’s foremost experts on marketing and consumer insights. Her book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury was a bestseller and is the go-to book for understanding luxury in Asia. Her latest book, The Maker of Filmmakers: How Jagat Murari and FTII Changed Indian Cinema Forever, is a portrait of her father, Jagat Murari, the visionary who built FTII from the ground up, and shaped a generation of iconic filmmakers. The book’s Insta handle is @makeroffilmmakers

Radha now lives in Dubai with her husband, Sanjeev Chadha, also PGP 1981.