Mr. Abhay Gupta is a renowned figure in the field of luxury retail and brand strategy in India. As the Founder of Luxury Connect Business School, Luxury Connect LLP, and Luxury Cruxx, he is widely recognized as an authority in luxury retail and brand management. With over two decades of experience in the industry, he has demonstrated expertise in delivering sustainable revenue growth and spearheading industry-changing initiatives.

Gupta's impressive career includes leadership positions in luxury brands such as Versace, Corneliani, and Lacoste. He played a vital role in introducing Versace mobile phones in India, establishing luxury boutiques, and launching innovative private labels. He has also been involved in compliance management during the anti-sweatshop drive by US brands.

In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Mr. Gupta is actively engaged in various affiliations and associations. He serves as the President of the Delhi NCR Chapter of the Center for Education Growth and Research and holds positions as a strategy advisor for Regalia Luxury Retail LLP and Mode Street Fashion.

Recognized for his contributions, Mr. Gupta has received numerous awards and accolades. He has been listed in the Black Book as one of Indian Luxury's Most Influential Top 100 individuals and has been honored as the Most Influential Retail Leader across Asia, the GCC, and the SA regions.

Mr. Abhay Gupta holds educational qualifications in luxury brand management from SDA Bocconi and a background in marine engineering. His passion for luxury retail, combined with his leadership skills and thought leadership, has culminated in the establishment of India's first and only luxury business school.

Luxury Connect Business School

What interests you about working as the founder of the college?

What interests me is basically the passion and the vision that I have for the college; that is my interest, and executing that interest to the best of my ability and available resources is what drives me and keeps me interested in moving forward.

How do you envision fostering a supportive and inclusive environment for both students and faculty within the college?

Well, we envision fostering an environment by continuously mentoring and coaching the students and the faculty, encouraging them to learn on their own, and encouraging them to go out into the field and do industry-connect sessions.

We encourage them to participate in real-time events in the industry. This is not restricted only to the students but also to the faculty. In a college like ours, most of the faculty comes from industry, so there is a lot of cross-pollination and cross-learning happening for our students as well as for other faculties.

For example, somebody from the automobile space may not be very well-versed in the jewelry space, but somebody from the jewelry space may not be well-versed in the automobile space. So, when there is cross-training of information, knowledge, visits, and practical projects, they are all learning from each other.

What strategies do you believe are important for enhancing students' engagement and ensuring their success throughout their college journey?

I think the most important strategy is to create a mix of being a teacher, a friend, and a parent, as most of our students are coming from remote locations and are staying away from family.

So, someone as young as a student who is away from his family needs a certain amount of personal mentoring, guidance, and direction, whereas a parent slash friend is required more than a teacher per se. So, I think when there is a proper balance between being a faculty member, a friend, a teacher, a parent, and a mentor slash guide, that is the kind of mixture that a student can appreciate and can carry with him for life.

So that's what we try to do: we not only counsel the student towards being a good student academically but also towards being a good human being, being very ethical, and being true to the commitments and values of the institute. So, it's a combination of several roles that help nurture today's youth.

How do you see technology playing a role in education and how do you integrate it into your college?

So well, I mean, post-COVID technology has taken quite a leading role in the sense that it has been accepted in the education space.

Let's say that pre-COVID, it was not accepted by the students nor by the faculty. But post-COVID, conducting programs online is something that is now openly accepted. It has also created the possibility for students who cannot travel to remote locations to join classes via live streaming.

So, we have been able to create a hybrid program. That has also helped us bring in international faculty and deliver guest lectures via the Internet. That has been at the forefront of the acceptance of technology. Besides that, I think the learning with respect to using artificial intelligence and 3D modeling using technology and VR and AR as a base is able to help students actually visualize the outcome of a particular project in a more transparent manner than in a theoretical manner.

So, I think technology today is very, very important, and technology from a learning perspective is now becoming a mainstay, and most good colleges have begun to adopt that by having a 3D simulation of any project that may be under discussion.

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What do you see as your college's greatest strength?

Well, I think my college has a couple of strengths. Number one, we are India's first and only luxury business school. That is a strength in itself. We focus only on luxury management programs. That's the second strength. We are not a fashion school trying to teach luxury or a business school trying to teach luxury.

We are a luxury school trying to teach the business of luxury. So that becomes a very focused, niche, and a strong point of differentiation. Number two, we engage faculty who are practicing professionals in the trade. So when you have a practicing professional delivering the theory of management, the understanding or implication of that particular theory is a lot more adaptive than just remaining theoretical.

Number four: Our industry connection is extremely strong. Our students are getting placed even before their examinations are over. Also, since all the faculty is come from the industry, the faculty is already carrying impressions about various students, which are indirectly disseminated into the industry. So, a student can eventually find employment in the area of his choice without much effort. Our batch size is extremely small If the batch size is restricted to 25 students, then we can focus on every student individually.

So a student is not a number for us, and every student has a name, all the faculties know the student by name, and we can mold their nature, their soft skills, and their personality besides just their theoretical inputs or theoretical grasp of the principles of management. That is coming because of the small batch size. Those are certain areas that we see as our strengths.

What advice would you like to give to the current youth and aspiring students?

Well, I think today's generation is facing a situation of information overload. Because there is information overload, the stability of the thought process is quite low. Hence, you see the reason why people switch their jobs or careers even before they have actually adopted or entrenched themselves in the benefits of that particular sector.

So I think what is important for the youth of today is to experiment but then find their anchor very, very quickly. Because it is important to go deep into a subject rather than just skimming the surface, So more and more young people today are used to instant gratification. It's a world of instant noodles. Everyone wants everything in two minutes. But in real life, whether it's a relationship, knowledge, expertise, or building a business, everything takes a lot of time.

That's why one needs to be patient and focused. One needs to be committed. One needs to be convinced by what he's doing. So I believe that the three C's for success, which a young person needs to adopt, are as follows: Number one is conviction, which means that you need to convince yourself; you cannot convince the world. Number two is commitment. Once you're convinced, you need to be committed to that particular idea, that particular thought, that particular job, or that particular relationship. Because without commitment, there is no future. It is all very superficial.

And number three is consistency. Once you're committed to a particular role, job, or relationship, you need to be consistent. If you are inconsistent in your behavior, you will not be able to achieve any kind of success. So we try to promote this to our students by saying that the three C's of success are an intermix or a balance between conviction, commitment, and consistency.

Those three should be invited into today's youth's lifestyles.

What would you like people to know about your university or college they may not know?

Well, that's a difficult question because we are now 11 years old. So people who are interested in luxury management know enough about us. But I think they may not know about 100% placement. They may not know about career opportunities in the luxury business. They may not know that all the faculty comes from the trade. They may not know that the batch sizes are very small. They may not know that each student is mentored individually. They may not know that we structure the learning as per every learner's capabilities. We need to accept the fact that even if one gets admitted to IIM, only the first few or the top few of the IIM students are able to find jobs with a humongous salary.

Which means that the average person gets left behind. At LCBS, we try to focus on the average person because someone who is extremely smart does not need too much of our guidance. Having said that, that does not mean that we ignore smart people. But we focus a lot on people who need a lot of support and a lot of handholding. So the first thing that a student does at LCBS is write his own SWOT. When he writes his own SWOT, he knows what his weaknesses are. So we believe in telling the student to focus on his strengths and improve his weaknesses. Because if you play to your strengths, you are sure to win. And if you continuously improve on your weaknesses, they will one day become your strengths.

So that is what we try to do with every individual that joins LCBS. And that is what I think should be the right direction for most colleges.

How does the college prioritize student support services such as career counseling, mental health resources, and extracurricular activities?

So, as I said, when we have a small batch size, our attention to every student is extremely detailed. The student would be given extra assignments, extra mentoring, or out-of-class hand-holding as needed for that particular student's personality development. We also encourage students to participate in group activities through group discussion classes that we have at the institute. We continuously hold master classes with very learned industry experts, including myself, where it is an open forum for the students to ask any kind of question, whether it is related to the curriculum or not related to the curriculum.

So those are activities that we carry out for personality and knowledge development. In terms of extracurricular activities, regular organization of debates, group discussions, dances, and social activities is carried out on campus. We have a very extensive student lounge where there are indoor activities like a carrom board, a music station, or a table tennis table. We also have a badminton court, a basketball court, etc. for students to practice indoor and outdoor activities. We keep on organizing various competitive situations using these facilities.

Then we also take students for dining etiquette classes at five-star hotels, as well as industry visits to various sectors of the luxury business, which gives them exposure to the industry before they actually start working in it. That is the reason that our students are able to successfully perform on the day they join their particular field. So their success rate is much higher because they have already experienced those spaces even before completing the program. And when they are continuously interacting with industry faculty, they are in a position to understand the faculty and what the manager does in situations of crisis or a new situation that may arise in daily life.

Hence, the program being more vocationally inclined or more practically inclined, one is able to counsel the students and steer their learning into a very high learning probability. That is what we try to do.

How does the curriculum of your college ensure the best practice of industry?

The college curriculum ensures the best practices of the industry in two ways. One is that the curriculum is updated almost daily. You might be surprised at why the luxury industry is highly dynamic. And what may have happened pre-COVID may not apply to what happened post-COVID. Even post-COVID or during COVID, numerous developments took place in the industry to counter the negative impact of COVID-19, and unless those are incorporated into the curriculum, the students will not be aware of them.

Hence, the need to dynamically update the curriculum with the latest case studies on almost a daily basis is something of a practice that we carry out. We have a research team whose job is to do nothing but keep scanning the developments of the luxury business globally and bring in suitable case studies by updating the curriculum regularly. So that's one serious practice that we adopt. The second practice is that since the same updated curriculum is delivered by a practicing professional, he's able to add on his or her experience of the latest situation in the market and the latest developments in the market.

Hence, through those two activities, we are continuously ensuring that the curriculum is very industry-relevant. And if the curriculum is not industry-relevant, then the students will not be relevant. So that's a practice that we have adopted from day one, and we continue to do that rapidly.