Mohan Murjani’s father B.K. Murjani left India in 1930 and moved to Shanghai to start the family’s apparel business. And now, Mr Murjani has a sense of coming full circle as he, along with his son, Vijay Murjani, builds up a portfolio of leading global brands to cater to the luxury, premium and specialty lifestyle segments in India.

Business Standard – Most remember him for old campaigns like Gloria Vanderbilt and Tommy Hilfiger, and the luxury brands he’s bringing – Murjani talks of what he wants to do now.

It is not easy to pin down Mohan Murjani, chairman of the Murjani Group, the company known for its association with A-line brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, French Connection, Gucci, Gloria Vanderbilt, Gucci, La Perla and Jimmy Choo. Given that most of these brands are on the verge of making their presence felt in the country, Murjani finds himself on a conveyor belt, shuttling between many cities across the globe.

Mohan Murjani made a fortune in the U.S. when he created Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and backed designer Tommy Hilfiger. The he lost it. Today he is rebuilding his empire in the high-end retailing boom sweeping the country he left 50 years ago: India. In the 1980s, amid a sharp downturn in his fortunes, one of the few assets Mr. Murjani held onto was the rights to sell Tommy Hilfiger products in India – even though imported jeans were effectively banned in the country then.

“I moved to India in late 2001 to set up the Tommy Hilfiger business . The first year went by as a learning process as setting up a structure proved more challenging than we thought. Having said that, by April 2004 we launched the brand through store openings in Delhi and Bangalore and went on to open a further 7 stores over the next a fifteen months,”

But as pervasive as the Coca-Cola apparel label has become in retail stores around the U.S., Murjani believes the line’s acceptance will be even greater in untapped markets overseas. “By fall, Coca-Cola Clothes will be carried in stores in Japan and the United Kingdom” he said.