Owners of Fords and Mitshubishis have probably never heard of him but are familiar with the luxurious leather car seats he fits in their vehicles.

Corporate chiefs and celebrities like Azim Premji, Vijay Mallya and Sachin Tendulkar, may not have met him but they buy his fine Nappa leather upholstered sofas for their living rooms.

Meet Sunil Suresh, the high-flying leather seat-dresser from Bangalore. His Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) company, Stanley Seating, has been custom-making leather seat upholstery for luxury carmakers such as General Motors and Honda for the past eight years.

And now lured by the Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion) interiors market, Suresh has launched his own top-end brand of leather furniture called Stanley Genuine Leather.

Targeted at the lifestyle market as well as corporate clients, the leather products currently retail from Stanley's showrooms in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.

And going by Suresh's reasoning, who plans to set up three more stores by 2005, the new stores should also do well.

"Leather is the new indulgence gripping India's rich. Wherever wealth is generated, leather follows," he observes. He believes that today's cash rich Indians are exposed to good things in life.

"They're travelling more and would spend Rs 2,000 for a product without batting an eyelid," he says.

He should know. Ever since he opened his first showroom in Delhi's Greater Kailash I in July 2002, he's been selling leather sofas and corporate chairs worth Rs 25 lakh (Rs 2.5 million) a month.

From Rs 150 to Rs 300 per square feet (or Rs 80,000 to Rs 200,000 for a sofa), his products are not cheap. But clients are lapping up the luxury pieces to dress up homes.

And why not, says Suresh: "You get an international quality product at 40 per cent of the cost at which it is being sold abroad. Even NRIs pick up sofas from Stanley."

The reason for the high price tag has partly to do with the product he sources; the leather is imported from Germany, Austria and Italy and the furniture is imported in semi-knocked down condition from China and Malaysia.

The pieces are later assembled at Suresh's Bangalore factory. "India produces high quality garment leather but it does not make good upholstery leather," says Suresh, who is also one of the largest importers and suppliers of automotive leather.

The company has an overwhelming choice of 55 shades of specially treated oxen hide such as Nappa from Germany, Montana (Sweden) and Classic (North America) for its furniture range.

It was in 1996 that Suresh quit his job with a leather house that manufactured fabric for European fashion houses such as Cartier, YSL and Atiner Egner.

He decided to put his leather technician qualification, acquired at Chennai's Central Leather Research Institute, to use.

Nearly Rs 900,000 were borrowed from family and friends to set up a tin-shed unit to manufacture car seats. With an eye on bagging contracts from car companies, he started spending long hours peeping inside other people's cars.

"I actually used to spend half a day in the parking lot," he recalls. Later, he invited a General Motors official to check out his "factory".

Though the GM executive was aghast, Suresh won the contract to make the first 50 car seats on a trial run.

Today he boasts of a factory equipped with specialised leather sewing machines such as Durkopp Adler and has a plant to produce 40 car seats a day.