Life stories of Indian and South East Asian business leaders

Shahnaz Husain (born 1941) is the founder of The Shahnaz Husain Group of India which is internationally renowned for organic beauty care, based on Ayurveda, blending ancient traditions with advanced techniques.

Season 1 Episode 10

Shahnaz Husain has built an enormous health care business from very humble beginnings starting in her New Delhi home.  It is an extraordinary life where she was born into a conservative Muslim family, married at 15 and became a mother at 16, spent time in Tehran before being ordered to return to India by her father when he heard that Shahnaz and her husband might take up Iranian citizenship. That was when she started her business which was an immediate success.  Her father did not allow that success to go to her head and demonstrated to her in a very simple way, as you will hear in the podcast, how transitory or temporary that success might be.  He counseled her to balance her business success by developing a spiritual side of her life and to be more concerned about those less fortunate.

My interview with Shahnaz is contained within my book, "Added Value - the life stories of Indian business leaders" published by Roli books in 2010 ((https://rolibooks.com/).


Please note that these interviews took place some time ago - over 25 years ago in the case of the South East Asian life story book and around 10 to 15 years ago in the case of the two Indian life story books. However, their stories are correct to the time of the interviews and the objective is to demonstrate the entrepreneurial skills they exhibited at the time of the interviews in building their businesses.