Next time you are hiring your company's top brass, remember to look into the birth charts of your candidates other than their qualifications.

For, the horoscope of your top executives could affect the fortunes of your company, warns astro numerologist PR Sundhar Raja who runs Astro Number out of Chennai.

An engineering graduate and a self-taught numerologist and graphologist, Sundhar Raja has only recently included screening of senior level personnel in his array of services to corporate clients.

For the last 22 years, Raja has been offering consultancy on company names and logos. It involves renaming companies and re-designing or fine-tuning their logos for growth.

Screening top executives was started after a friend sought advise on an internal promotion issue at his management school in Bangalore.

"I got into it by sheer coincidence but now I offer the service to any company that asks for it," informs Raja.

To assess an executive's suitability for a company, the numerologist reads his birth chart. As a graphalogist, he even analyses handwriting to make his suggestions.

"It is important to study their fortunes as often individuals are known to have taken the company down with them," he says.

Through its other service on company names and logo designs, Astro Number claims it helps corporate houses in achieving growth targets, make profits and expand.

His clients include a number of corporate houses (a tea major, a leading battery manufacturing company, an upcoming energy conglomerate, to name a few. A few months back, Astro Number helped a major IT company redesign its logo.

"The company's logo had rough edges and was in blue and orange which did not suit the promoter's astrological profile," says Raja.

After studying both the company's birth chart (every company has a life span which can be measured by its registration number and date of registration, he says) and the promoter's details, the logo was changed.

The edges in the logo were smoothened and the colour was changed to red post, which the company is said to be doing well.

Besides, it even unlocked the logo of a Kolkata based company. "A locked-in logo prevents growth," says Raja.

However, ever since the logo has been redesigned, he claims the company's held-up orders are materialising.

The logo of a Hyderabad based appliance manufacturer has also been redesigned recently by Raja who works with a team of designers.

Talking of logos, he says that the logo for Enron was not a good design. "If it had taken care of its logo, the company may still have been around. There is nothing wrong with the name but the logo -- with an 'E' tilted backward with the name pointing down -- was all-wrong," Sundhar Raja points out.

Interestingly, he has studied over 1,500 books and manuscripts to develop expertise in palmistry, astro nameology, graphology and colour thearpy.

He strongly believes that "a name can make or break the fortunes of an individual, company and even a country."

His research on names of countries and their suitability for growth and progress concludes that India would perform better if it changed its name to Bharat.

"It will make greater economic progress as the name Bharat suits the Independence date, numerologically," he says.