The Hindu Business Line : Say cheese, India Inc

Both Gautam Singhania (above) and Vijay Mallya (below) have an amazing zest for life and fun, and have no hesitation in posing for the camera. This lifestyle element gives me a wider canvas as a photographer.

Ace photographer Atul Kasbekar is now making corporate India's head honchos walk, talk, dress and don carefully projected public images. So, the next time you see ICICI's Chanda Kochchar with colour co-ordinated clothes and accessories, Ratan Tata in print with his best profile on display or Anil Ambani in designer jogging gear it is likely the work of Corporate Image, Kasbekar's new company.

Armed with his best cameras, lenses and a battery of assistants, he looks set to literally change the face of corporate India and has already bagged clients that include two major media houses.

With years of experience photographing celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Shah Rukh Khan, Cindy Crawford, Philippe Pascal, Sachin Tendulkar and Pierce Brosnan, Kasbekar now wants to use his expertise to capture the titans of India Inc in their best moments. "While tremendous attention is paid to the corporate, product and retail identities, the management identity is a much ignored aspect. Corporate Image will seek to photographically capture the personality of a company through the individuals who lead it," says Kasbekar who is no stranger to corporate India, having captured on camera corporate biggies like the Ambanis, ICICI's K.V. Kamath, Gautam Singhania and Ratan Tata.

"Le Ioccoca was Chrysler's best brand ambassador and the media was flooded with carefully projected images of the man who is so much credited with the company's turnaround. Corporate portraiture is a part of corporate life in the western world and heads of large business houses here too have the option now," says Kasbekar.

"Given the huge media interest in them, corporates can proactively add value by having the right images projected not just in the media but also in their corporate literature and Web sites," he adds.

Image building

Kasbekar and his team will shoot unique images of corporate clients after extensive research on the company's values, the individual's personal beliefs, tastes and sense of style. Which essentially means that once a company signs him on, the team will work on research, location scouting, wardrobe, make-up, hair and shoots, to digital retouching and delivery of images in print and digital form. The final result will be a bank of images that can be used in corporate literature such as brochures, annual reports and in the media. "And the price for that would depend on whether the company wants just simple portraits or go the whole hog, capturing the person in his house, at his farm, in the cockpit of his private aircraft or behind his set of hot wheels," he says.

Do the big corporate bosses take kindly to being told what to wear, how to walk or pose for him? "Models are the only people who enjoy facing the camera. Everybody else has an element of discomfort posing for us and we do our best to keep them as relaxed as possible. And as for their taking offence at being instructed how to pose for the camera, I have found that leaders in every field are forever willing to learn. I remember having told the Ambanis to carry extra sets of jackets, ties and other accessories while arriving for the shoot and they were more than happy to oblige," says Kasbekar, adding that the key to a proper shoot with corporate leaders is to get it done fast. "The shot of Mr Ratan Tata at the Zodiac Grill at the Taj was done in three-and-a-half minutes, after which he shook hands, said thanks and left," he says.

Among his favourite corporate subjects are UB's Vijay Mallya who he has photographed in the cockpit of a Kingfisher aircraft and Raymonds' Chairman and Managing Director Gautam Singhania at his Mumbai office, wearing a suit from the brand's limited edition Chairman Collection. "Both of them have an amazing zest for life and fun, and have no hesitation in posing for the camera — be it on a speedboat or yacht, or the latter's dhow. This lifestyle element gives me a wider canvas as a photographer and both of them are very comfortable around the camera," he says.

Kasbekar is an alumni of the Brooks Institute of Photography (Santa Barbara) and has, for over two decades, been part of the country's rapidly growing communications industry. His work can be seen regularly in the Elle, Cosmopolitan, L'Officiel, and Time magazines — he has also shot cover pictures for these magazines. The Swatch Group and LVMH Group, companies that own some of the best-known luxury brands in the world, work directly with him for their advertising campaigns in India.

The idea for the new company, incidentally, came to him from his interactions with industrialist Ajay Piramal, whose wife Swati often expressed concern that her husband needed to get some new pictures done fast as the earlier ones were looking dated. "Getting the pictures were an annual exercise for the Piramals and I figured out that there are going to be many such companies and lots of such work happening in India," says Kasbekar.

Over the next few months, he plans to have a team of professional photographers working out of major centres to tap the latent need for professional portfolios for companies. "We are close to setting up shop in Delhi and as I see it, there is enough potential around in this field that I can get away with doing just a fraction of the work that will come to us," he signs off.

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