How I Did It: Prema Sagar

Prema Sagar helps some of the world’s largest companies—think Microsoft, HP, Pepsi—carefully craft their image. But, it’s tough to slot Sagar, founder and principal of Genesis Burson-Marsteller, one of India’s best-known public relations firms, into any category. She’s at once a college dropout, a serial entrepreneur and a genuine do-gooder. For somebody who hones corporate pitches to perfection for her 120 clients, Sagar’s also disarmingly frank. Almost anti-status quo, she’s currently busy turning her nearly 250-people firm inside out.  

I was born in Kanpur in 1953. My mother is Swiss and my father Sindhi. My parents were so much in love that I think they almost forgot about my brother and me. My brother and I spent a lot of our time together while growing up. We are still very, very close. My father was in the Indian Air Force. We moved around with him.

I had a challenging childhood. I was very rebellious, mainly because my father said no to everything. Somebody just had to tell me I couldn’t do something, and I wanted to prove I could. I did my schooling from Sacred Heart Girls High School in Bengaluru, and my pre-university from Hislop College, Nagpur. My father, posted in Nagpur, wanted me to continue college there. I wanted to go to Sydenham College in Mumbai but my father didn’t want me to go there. He said I could go to Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi if I got through the merit list. I think I chose to do BCom because it was the new, unexpected thing to do. I got through SRCC, becoming one of the eight girls to get in that year.  My father let me go. I jumped on a train and came here. I knew not a soul in Delhi.

I dropped out after two years at SRCC. My dad was very upset. I decided to get a job. I asked my father to help me find one but he refused. He told me nobody had helped him find a job, and he wouldn’t help me.

Those were different times. There weren’t as many opportunities. My cousin sister worked as a receptionist in a law firm called Sagar & Co. She was getting married and leaving for the US. I asked her to introduce me to her bosses to fill her position. She said she wouldn’t because her employers didn’t want to hire more women. Their last three receptionists had gotten married and moved to the US.

I knew the law firm’s office was in a building called Kanchanjunga in Connaught Place. It was on the ninth floor, and that was the first time I saw an elevator. I was too scared to get inside so I ran up all the way to the ninth storey to meet Dr Sagar, who headed the firm. He wasn’t there but I was sent to a A.R. Lall who agreed to give me my first job as a receptionist.  I began with 600 a month. And, they raised it to 700 after a month. Within months, I was handling accounts and administration. It taught me a lot.  I worked in Sagar & Co from January 1975 till July 1976. I met my husband, Jyoti, there. He was one of the young lawyers. After we married in 1976, I worked in another firm for a year and a half.

I’ve always followed my heart. I remember one day waking up and thinking I wanted to start a printing business. My son Rahul was one and a half years old then. And, as we had our morning tea, I told my husband about my plan. He’s always been very supportive but he didn’t think I meant it. I, however, set to work. My brother worked in the tea gardens but was in Delhi for a holiday then. He was excited with the idea and we partnered to start the business. He gave up his job in Assam and moved to Delhi. I didn’t think siblings working together was a good idea. But, he convinced me. He’s an introvert, and I am an extrovert. He said he’d take care of the printing, and I could focus on the marketing, finance, and driving (actually pushing) our 1950 Morris Minor all around town.

A friend of my husband’s told me he’d introduce me to Ravi Suri, the general manager of the Maurya Sheraton. Mr Suri met me, and told his purchase manager, Mahinder Garg, to give me work. Garg asked us to submit a quote for the luggage tags that hotels use even today. We didn’t even know how to prepare a quote. So, we went to somebody my husband knew who ran a very successful printing unit. He helped us calculate a price. It came to 11 paise per tag. Garg brought us down to 9 paise per tag and gave us an order for three months. Soon, we realised we had under quoted. We were paying out of our pocket. But we learnt a lot and Maurya gave us lots of work after that. This was the biggest break we got.

The printing business grew steadily after that. In 1983, I went through a difficult pregnancy, and subsequently lost the child. I was bedridden for six months. That’s when I started working on the Genesis City Guide. My brother was running the press, so I could focus on doing something else. In any case, I am very restless. I hate more of the same. The city guides were very successful in hotels and bookshops for 13 years. 

It was during a meeting for the city guides, and our printing work that I first heard of public relations. I was in the office of Anil Chanana, general manager, Maurya Sheration, when his assistant told him a journalist was waiting to meet him. He didn’t like the idea and I went deeper into why he felt that way. Wasn’t it good to be in the media as the GM of a wonderful property?

Around the same time, in late 1989, Priya Paul of Park Hotels called me suddenly. She asked me to do their PR. Their Delhi hotel had a mere 3 per cent occupancy at the time. Priya was 23 when she had to take charge of the hotel chain. We had started printing and graphic designing for them. I didn’t know whether it was going to be a success. But, I was soon spending half a day there.

It was really a very decent hotel even then. All it needed was for people to come see it. While reading March McCormick’s book on public speaking, the idea of a public speaking event came to me. I told Priya all we need is coffee and biscuits to do this. We branded it Going Public @ The Park. Our first speaker was Ramesh Vangal. He had just brought Pepsi back to India. He agreed to do a talk on building India Inc. We put a small ad in Times of India and were surprised to see a full auditorium. The series was a runaway success. We did it monthly. We also launched Cinema @ The Park, Theatre @ The Park at their other properties in Kolkata and Visakhapatnam. In fact, Park Hotels continues to be a client.

I told my brother to take care of the printing business, and decided to shut the city guides. The magazine was irritating me. Every month, we’d be scrounging for ads. But, PR just wasn’t. I took to it amazingly. There’s nothing like success to motivate you.

I formally created Genesis Public Relations in November 1992. Thai Airways was our second client, and we worked with them for seven years. We did a lot of work for Travel House, the travel agency of ITC. My city guide contacts helped. I have never, ever done cold calling, ever. I’ll never do it.

But, few people knew what PR was. They thought PR was about being a PRO who is basically somebody who pushes files from one table to another to get a job done. In June 1992, I decided to get my fundas right by going to Frank Jefkins Institute of Public Relations in UK. I didn’t have much money. But, I had a free air ticket. My husband paid 1.5 lakh for the month-long course.

I loved the start-up days. We took people who came straight out of college.

I told our people no one would go to journalists till they had a definite story idea. We didn't want to just hand out press releases.”

I remember how two or three of us would sit together, and debate over each word in a press release.

Right from the beginning, I made a huge shift from how other agencies were working. I told my people that nobody would go to journalists till they had a definite story idea to discuss. We didn’t hand out press releases. I told them they would be treated as professionals only if they understood their domain. We did that very well in our early years. We were smaller, so we could spend more time on our domains. Also, we never approached PR from a quantity point of view. We focused on the quality of media, and what it was saying. That’s always differentiated us. 

We worked with some of the biggest names. In 1993, Genesis launched the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Sometime after, we began working with the Indian Aluminium Company (INDAL). Looking back, I think I learnt the most from these early accounts. I remember when Sterlite did a hostile takeover of INDAL. In this case, especially, I learnt that you can’t always listen to what the CEOs are saying.  Our industry is very servile. But, you have to be able to put your foot down. You might go wrong but have an independent view, put up a debate.

By 1998, Genesis had spread to Bengaluru, where we signed up clients like Sun Microsystems and Intel, and Kolkata. We also tied up with Manning Selvage & Lee, the world’s seventh largest PR firm. We’ve grown from strength to strength ever since. We’ve introduced several best practices in our industry like adopting Robert Kaplan’s Balanced Scorecard Method, launching Reputation Capital, a methodology for corporate reputation management.

In 2005, Burson-Marsteller acquired us. We got integrated with their Asia-Pacific regional network. In 2008, we were ranked the India Consultancy of the Year by The Holmes Report. Today, we are 250-plus people, and have 110-plus retainer clients across seven offices and 100 cities.

I really like winning. That’s the entrepreneur in me. I used to be in tears when we’d lose clients. As I recently wrote in an internal blog for employees, if you have a sense of purpose, you’ll always be successful.  If you don’t have it, find it. 

I am blessed with a great team. In fact, middle of last year, I almost felt I could walk away from all of this, like my role here was over. It was my lowest ebb. I felt I had lost my purpose. I am not interested if I can’t change things.

In 2010, I underwent a serious surgery in Singapore, and had a lot of time to think about what next. The surgery was a life-changing experience and I decided that if I recovered fully, I needed to change the game plan in the company.  If not, then I’d put all my time behind the Genesis Foundation (a not-for-profit she’s set up to help treat critically ill orphan and less privileged children), and open a Music Cafe.

I bounced back after the surgery, and told Mark Penn, our global CEO, that I would quit, or if I stayed, I’d change everything around. I told him India is changing very fast but we are all stuck being the way we were. The need was to give our clients integrated solutions. And, I’ve no idea why he said, ‘You’ve built the company, and I know you will do the best for it.’

If you have a sense of purpose, you’ll always be successful. If you don’t have it, find it.”

Since then, we’ve begun digital marketing. It’s an exciting new area. We’ve also created practice areas we had lost in between like technology, corporate, consumer marketing and telecom. I am really enjoying what I do now. I am exhausted when I get home. Sometimes, I sleep for only four hours.

I love being in the thick of things. Just this morning, I thought, I need to have somebody above me so I can go back to client servicing. I love to make an impact and help a client who is in deep trouble.