How to start a clothing brand in India ft. Siddharth Dungarwal | Snitch | Business Talkies

What is the most important thing to become a good investor? Patience, knowledge, research or risk management. Yes, all these are important.

And along with this, it is important to have the skill to understand businesses. India is a land of entrepreneurs. And in front of all of us, there are thousands of examples of such businesses who have faced a lot of challenges, struggled for years, but made a great business.

How is business made in India? If you learn this, then whether it is investing, job or business, you can outperform in every field of your life. Hi, my name is Vaibhav Srisanthi.

And welcome to the first episode of Groww's new show, Business Talkies. In this show, we will tell you about such businesses in India that inspire millions of Indians to do business every day. And directly learn from their owners the secrets of business that you won't even find in Google.

So, let's start the first episode of Business Talkies. No doubt, clothing line is a super competitive business. This space is dominated by players like Zara, H&M, Mags.

But there is one brand in this competitive space which has made a revenue of 100 crores in 3 years. And that is Snitch. If you also want to make an apparel business or want to make a business which is in a very competitive space, you should meet Siddharth Dugarwal, who is the founder of Snitch.

Yes, the same brand which has made a revenue of 100 crores in just 3 years. If you think you have heard about Snitch, that is because you might have seen Snitch in Shark Tank. In Shark Tank, they cracked the All Shark deal at a 100 crore valuation.

So, I don't know if you are excited or not, but I am very excited to explore this fantastic brand, the office, the people, the founder, so that I learn and you can also learn its business intricacies. So, let's go. Hey Sid, how's it going?

You've got an incredible place here. Thank you, man. I want to know the genesis.

How was your childhood? I think it was a very simple childhood. My father actually worked really hard to bring us up.

Started his jewellery business. Obviously, he was the only son, so I had to run that business. I used to sit in the jewellery store all day, but I used to get bored.

Checking ring sizes. There was no kick. And luckily, there was just a store next to my dad's jewellery store, which was getting vacated.

Okay. 2009, I remember, I was getting that store just next to my dad's store. And I wanted to do something in clothing.

And just spoke to a few friends, who knew a few factories. Okay. So, I just went there, picked up surplus clothing.

Bangalore is a manufacturing hub for apparels. So, where were you picking up surplus clothing from? From other factories?

Yes. Stores? So, there are a lot of factories in Bangalore, right?

Who manufacture for a lot of international brands. Is it? Yeah, yeah.

It's a manufacturing hub for woven. . .

I thought Tirupur is the. . .

Tirupur is for knits. Bangalore is for woven garments. Interesting.

Shirts, trousers, denims. A lot of, you know, like Gokul Das Exports, Texport. All the big companies were here.

So, I used to go there. I used to, you know, just get 100-200 pieces, buy it from them and sell them in retail. The store started doing really well.

You know, a lot of other retailers were interested in buying, you know, similar sort of merchandise. So, they said, man, source a little more and give it to us too. That's when I started trading.

So, I used to run the store from 12 to 8 in the night. After 8, it used to become a wholesale store. From 8 to 3, we.

. . So, the people.

. . The people whose shop it was, used to come and buy from you?

Yes, they used to come and choose. Then we used to sit all night and pack. And the next day, we used to ship.

So, it kept on going. But 2012, something really strange happened. While dealing with these factories, there was a particular factory that had to sell its fabrics too.

Okay. And this was beautiful shirt fabric. Transaction was worth about 25 lakhs.

I had 2. 5-3 lakhs in savings. But I was making 2.

5 lakhs rupees just by moving the stock from place A to place B because I had a buyer ready. So, I took a loan from my friends and family. I did that transaction.

But to my bad luck, the factory had an audit. And they couldn't dispatch it for like 30-35 days. And post which, this guy is like, boss, I don't want it anymore.

It is too late. And I was basically stuck with that factory. Because you were becoming a mediator.

I was a mediator. From where did you pick it up and give it to someone else? Yes.

So, I took all the money on loan. Now, this guy gave me his hand and said, boss, I don't want it anymore. And I was basically stuck with that fabric.

Didn't have a place to keep it also. Kept it at a friend's garage. That's when I made these very small swatches out of those fabrics.

And then I called and started that I have this fabric. Can you bail me out of this situation? So, there was one particular retailer in Bombay.

He had around 17-20 shops back then in Bombay. He called me up and he was like, you know Sid, the fabric is fabulous. Can you make shirts out of them?

And I was stunned because I didn't have a background in production. I didn't know anything about production at all. But then he said, make 200-300 pieces of sample and send it.

I think I can bail you out of this situation. Because the fabric is very good. Went to the big factories.

No one was ready to do that small MOQ. So, I got a factory. I sat down for almost 4 weeks.

Understood the whole process of production. What are the machineries like? How do you make silhouettes?

How do you make patterns? How do you check shrinkage? What is interlining?

How do you use it? Which thread should be used? So, in a fabric worth Rs.

25 lakhs, there were almost 20,000 shirts made. Out of which I had to make a sample of 300 pieces. I made those 300 pieces.

Sent it to Bombay. Over the weekend, all those shirts flew off his counter. He called me up and said, convert everything into shirts.

Wow! And I converted that entire batch into shirts. And ended up making Rs.

6. 5 lakhs. While I was making Rs.

2. 5 lakhs, selling the fabric. So, it was a huge insight for me.

I realised that production is a bigger game. From 2012 until 2019, this is what I was doing. So, I was running like a buying house.

Wherein we never owned any factory. But we used to design, manufacture and deliver for brands. So, I have done productions for like Madhura, Arvind, you know, V-Mart, D-Mart.

A lot of these family stores like RS Brothers, JC Brothers. And there are like so many. South India is full of these.

Yeah, yeah. So, I kept doing that. I scaled that business to almost 60-70 crore sort of ARR.

It took me about 10 years to reach there. But back of the mind, it was always that I should start my own brand. So, it was not Stitch then?

No, it was not. You know, what I observed was, every brand was making, you know, collection season-wise. I saw that everyone was doing the same.

Summer came, summer collection was made. Winter came, winter collection was made. A year ago, he was planning it.

Correct. And he was making it. I asked myself, why?

The first answer I got was, the supply chain was completely broken. Today, if you want to make a black hoodie with some print, you will make its tech pack. I mean, you will send it to 5 vendors.

Those 5 vendors will source its raw material. It takes 2-3 weeks. Then they will send you the whole product for approval.

You will pass your comments. Then you will send PO. The whole process was of 7-8 months.

I think in the end of 2019, we started Snitch. Again, more like a B2B brand. I used to make products on Snitch label.

But I used to sell them to all the retailers. It was a B2B business. Who are these retailers?

These are retailers, multi-brand outlet stores across India. Like brand, factory? Yes, there were many.

I mean. . .

Shopper stops? We didn't go to shopper stops. At a small level, there are many in Bombay.

There are Dros. Like WeMart, Big Bazaar. Yes, WeMart.

Big Bazaar type. Your RS brothers in Hyderabad. Got it.

I mean, it was your own brand, but you used to make products B2B. Correct. Even today, 80% of the brands in India sell like that only.

Correct. They never go D2C, right? Started that and we got tremendous response initially itself.

Reason was one, if you are selling Benetton stock or US Polo or any other brand. What happens is, they will call you to a road show, 6 months before. That this is our summer collection, come and book your orders.

You have to predict your sale for 6 months. And then you have to place your orders. And then they will deliver it in phases.

We made it very easy. We said, you will get a push notification every morning. We made a small app.

It was everyday you will get new style. You select MOQs as low as 25 to 50 pieces. So that was a game changer for us.

Now you will see from the aspect of retailer, it was that I sold 100 pieces of shirt today. I have to buy 100 pieces. I will buy maybe 5 or 6 different brands.

25-30 pieces. And that's when, you know, we started getting a lot of traction. Got it.

Everyday morning I am telling you, a new style has come. For retailers, that churn rate becomes very easy. You have to buy 25 pieces, pay for it, again next day.

So that became very very successful. But within 9 to 10 months of our operations, you know, time was a test. We were left with a huge inventory.

So you are saying, the supply chain, which used to take almost 8 months, you brought it down to 1 day. Not 1 day in a week, we brought it down to 25 days. 25 days.

So this is the concept of fast fashion. Absolutely yes. So there are a lot of things.

It is not only, the number one thing that you have to crack is the supply chain itself. How could you, it's not like I have a third eye. That what I am seeing, no one in the world is seeing.

Everyone is seeing the same sort of trends, all the procedures are the same. But the ability to do that really fast, is the key. Why didn't anyone do this before?

I think no one had thought from that direction. I mean, the biggest insight for me was like, you know, brands like H&M and Zara were coming in to India and disrupting the traditional model of business. They were tech savvy.

H&M and Zara will be considered fast fashion? Absolutely yes. Yes.

But it's not super fast fashion. It is not super fast fashion. Sheen would be the super fast fashion.

Do you want to give a quick differentiation between regular fashion and fast fashion? What is regular fashion, fast fashion and super fast fashion? So regular fashion is, you know, collection season wise.

A brand has a mood board and they launch a product with a storyline. Second is fast fashion, which is the genre we are in. Like Zara, H&M, etc.

Where new collection as per new trends keep launching. And then it is Sheen, which is just working on a very strong supply chain. Sheen's model is that it is tied up with lakhs of vendors.

The vendors themselves upload pictures. It's running like a marketplace but on its own label. So that is the biggest differentiator.

Sheen may be launching thousands of products every single day. And all this is not designed by their team. They approve.

Absolutely. It's like a marketplace. But they actually buy the stock and sell it.

Sheen's capability is that if a designer has made a big dress which is lakhs, it can bring that live within 24 hours. Wow! When you entered fast fashion, you said you figured out the way around it.

What was it like? What was the process like? So the process was, number one, that we had to work with factories exclusively.

So today, whichever factory we acquire, the first thing that we do is train the entire employees. You know, upskill them the way we want. Second is we change the entire layout of the factory.

And we make it very agile. Which is helpful for your production. Absolutely.

So we make it very agile. So that if we want to make a boxer in our shirt factory, it can be made. If we want to make jeans in a trouser factory, it can be made.

So now factories convert it into start-ups. Absolutely. So we started doing that.

Now we told the factory, boss, you don't have to do anything. You just have to look at compliance. You have to pay factory wages and you have to process.

My team does the entire designing. My team takes the entire charge of the factory. From quality check, telling when to make which style, from that to, the factory has to just basically cut the fabric, stitch the garment and then pack it.

Apart from that, the entire process that our team handles. Procurement of fabric and all that. From procurement of raw materials to making the cads, to doing the fit checks, to doing all the R&D that is required before it goes under production.

Everything is done in-house. So if I want to make a fast fashion brand like yours, the most important thing is design and procurement of quality material should be owned by me. And then factories, who make the end product, I have to own their production in some form or fashion.

This is the playbook. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are a lot of other things.

Like, you should be really smart in deciding which product, when do you launch, what is the sort of MOQs, and making the tech behind it. So that is also very very important. One more question that always comes to my mind in fast fashion, that few products get like insane amount of sales.

There are three categories. One is your head, which is your top product. Which drives the major.

. . 365 days, it is giving you certain growth.

Then it is your belly, which is not too high, not too low. It is sort of going on. And then is your tail.

Tail is something that is not selling. And then you bring in measures, how do you sell them. And then there is your new SKUs.

And then new SKUs will again go and sit in head, belly, tail sort of a. . .

Right. Superb. This is super helpful.

Now, pandemic happened. Yes. Yeah.

So, you know the pandemic happened and we were left with a huge inventory. The first thing that came to my mind was either go on an Ajio or a Myntra, try and liquidate stocks. But then realized, A, we wouldn't be making any money there.

B, the brand would get zero, you know, recognition. Why like this? Because Myntra, Ajio have massive marketplaces.

Yes, it is very difficult to make money. Okay. Because, one, you need placement.

Between those 10,000 brands, you need placement. For that, you have to pay. I mean, that was the biggest learning and then, you know, just decided to start our own website on July 4th, 2020.

So, that is when you decided to do D2C now. Yes. So, then came in Shopify.

Boss, in 24 hours, we were live. 35 products, team of 4 people, you know, 2 racks in the corner of our office was the warehouse. And then, a little bit of performance marketing, a little bit of content marketing.

Reached out to a lot of influencers for free. I used to message on Instagram, Sir, we are an Indian startup. You know, please help us promote the product.

And I think at least 50% of them replied. And everything was barter. And we started seeing that traction happening.

So, we launched Boxer. I think, within 15-20 days of launching the website. And the demand was crazy.

It felt like, yes, I mean, no one has washed the underwear in COVID. That was the sort of, you know, demand. We brought 200 pieces and it was over by night.

We brought 1000 pieces and it was over in 3 days. You said that you brought your first customer from influencer marketing. No.

So, the first thing was, as soon as you make something, you blast your friends, family, everyone. You are on all WhatsApp groups. You made the entire broadcast list.

All the contacts, you, your family, everyone is spreading the news. So, initially we saw that it was going great for a week. Our target was 10 orders a day.

So, we started and, I mean, we started hitting 30 orders within a week only. Amazing. And then we hit 100 orders a day also within like 10-15 days.

It was coming from friends and family. Yes, I mean, it was happening. And then suddenly it became flat.

And then I was like, how do we now scale? Right? And then started coming back to 50, 70, 30.

That's when we started doing all these influencer campaigns. How to make a lot of ads on Facebook. You know, we learned that whole process.

How to create content. How to create content. Photoshoot of the product.

You know, how do you do all of that. When you are distributing the product to every other outlet, you don't own any data, right? Like who is buying the product.

No, we don't own. So, how do you make your product good? Like I told you, right?

One of the reasons why we didn't go to Ajiomintra was that also. Because you don't own the data. You don't know anything.

Who is buying it? Why did they return it? You get some insights.

But not at the level that you would want. What level of insights did you get? So, number one is your profile of customers only, right?

That they don't know. Yes, that what is their age? They don't know anything.

They don't give any data. They don't give, right? Myntra will not share any customer data to you.

So, I mean that's how we started 2020 team of 4 people. You know, 2 racks in the corner was our warehouse. We were doing literally everything.

From picking the order to packing it to social media. To customer support. 4 people.

Absolutely. And then we started building a team. Luckily, what happened was that many students were unemployed in COVID.

And that's how the whole journey started. And then we started growing. Month on month.

You know, we were growing 15%, 20%, 50%, 100% month on month. And within 1 year of our launch, we decided that let's launch an app as well. We got tremendous response on the app.

You know, today we have more than 2 million downloads on the app. 55% of our D2C revenue comes through the app. Wow.

Which is a phenomenal number. The conversion rate on our app is 3x of what it is on the website. Why is that?

We didn't do any dedicated campaign for the app. We just gave a pop-up on the website. Get 150 rupees off on your first purchase via the app.

Okay. It was simple. So, the new customer who was coming on the website used to install the app to get that 150 rupees off.

Okay, let's take a step back. Which started in 19? Yeah.

You made a label in 19. And you distributed that as a B2B player. Correct.

There was a pandemic. In 2020, you eventually launched Stitch's website. Correct.

The app was released till 2021. Before the app, how much revenue did you take? We were around, I would say, 30 crores.

Per year? In that year, we did. Yeah.

Insane. And then post app, end of 2022. So, year 1, end of 2021.

We were at 11. Then 44. Then last year, we closed at 110.

Amazing. Yeah. FY23.

FY23. That's crazy. Now, we are almost at an ARR of 300.

Insane. And like, in this business, what I'm curious is, what are the gross margins? Gross margins for us, you know, typically is between 50 to 52%.

So, your margin is 75 crores out of 150 crores. Yes, it's a gross margin. But, you know, marketing eats out almost 25% of it.

And then we have shipping and logistic cost, which is at about 7 to 8%. And after all operational expenses, we've always been profitable. So, we.

. . You've always been profitable.

Yeah, yeah. Our EBITDA is anywhere between 7 to 8%. So, how much is your AOV?

When we started, it was 800-900. And the number one insight, again, that I learnt, right? In apparel, you cannot, you know, get successful unless your AOV is par 1500.

So, a target AOV. . .

I think is at least 1400 and above. 1500, okay. Right?

So, currently, ours is at 1800. Your AOV, obviously, will not always be 1500 or 1700. What were those experiments that helped you to get to that point?

So, one was that, could we get like an insight to customers? That this is a shirt and this pant will go really well with it. So, it's not a single product?

No. People buy multiple products at once. Absolutely.

At present, we are at 1. 8 sort of UPT. So, that is like a.

. . UPT is?

Unit per transaction. Got it. So it is at 1.

8. People who are buying are just not buying one product. Majority of the consumers buy two or above.

And the ways to do that is simply by clubbing offers like buy two, get this, or capping it to an AOVK, buy above 1999 and get 15% off or free shipping. We've done multiple sort of tests. On your add to cart, what products can you add so that.

. . Like a bump.

Yeah, like a bump. Lot of A, B testing we did and finally we were able to crack that 1700 plus sort of a number. That's when retention kicks in, that how much is your repeat rate.

How much is the repeat? So our repeat is around 43-44%. And why is repeat induced?

For example, I bought this t-shirt from Snitch. Right? Why should I buy this again from Snitch?

I think product is the number one thing. I mean, I won't even talk about the product. The number two thing is customer experience.

We were one of the first D2C brands who gave refunds at pick up. But isn't there a fraud because of this? No, there wasn't.

Because we used to do QC with the delivery. In the pick up? Yeah, in the pick up itself.

They charge a little premium but they were basic QC that the person had to do like check the label, check the SQ number. They had an image of the product. Right?

So our simple idea was that Zara and H&M are cheap fast fashion brands in Europe. Correct. For India, they are a premium brand.

If we have to build a Zara for India, we will have to go one step down in terms of pricing. Correct. So we said we will position ourselves exactly between a Maxin and H&M.

We will be about 30% above Maxin pricing but give the aspiration and product quality of an H&M and Zara. And you know there has never been any men centric brand. When is the right time for me to invest in the app?

I think once you start seeing good repeat rates. Like if you start now and you are seeing repeats above 35% in a year. And have you noticed anything like this where the app consumers have higher AOVA?

Absolutely. There is a difference? Absolutely.

Almost 1. 5x. Conversion will also be more.

Conversion is 3x. 3x higher. Why?

It is obvious that majority of those people have bought from us earlier. Number one. Number two is we do a lot of specific targeting on the app.

Like what products will I show you? What sort of benefits do I give you for using the app? And for this, your store is still in Shopify?

Yeah. So we have just built a plugin. I mean we have built an app and plugged it in to Shopify.

And there are solutions available? Absolutely yes. Sir, in today's date, if someone wants to do online business in India, it could happen as less as 30 seconds.

I think you can set up a store within 30-60 seconds is what they claim. I have tried that also. Yeah.

Let's come to something interesting. Yeah. Shark Tank.

Okay. What phase of the business were you in when you got a call in Shark Tank? At what stage were you in revenue?

We were doing 4-5 crores per month. Per month? Yes.

So 50-60 crores. Yes. 50-60 crores sort of number.

So my episode was shot in I think August-September. But the telecast was done in January. There was a gap of 5 months.

Yes. There was a gap of 5 months. When we applied, we were at 5-6.

When we went there, we already hit like a 8-9 crores sort of a number. The process was, I mean the experience was surreal. It was so easy.

You know, the application came, you are filling it. You were selected. I had to audition in Bangalore.

There was one location where I had to physically go and audition. After that, we were selected. From my flight, I mean travel to my stay, to my food, everything was taken care by them.

Beautiful. I had to just go there. You know, I think 2-3 days we were there.

The episode aired for 10-15 minutes. I was there for almost 1 hour 45 minutes. Wow.

So it was a very deep conversation. I think it happens for everyone. If it is very interesting, it stretches to 2 hours.

If it is not so interesting, it ends in 45 minutes. Got it. Typical pitch is almost 1 and a half hours.

You are there. How was Shark Tank as a distribution channel? What happened?

After the episode of Shark Tank aired, Next 24 hours, 48 hours, 7 days, 14 days, 28 days. It was crazy. During the episode, we had 35,000 visitors live on the website and app.

Right? Usually, our website has 35,000 people. Usually, it is 1,000-1,500 sorts.

Within, I think, 24 hours, we recorded our highest sale, obviously. We did almost, in gross sales, about 70-80 lakhs. Wow.

In a single day. That is 5 times more than your regular? 5 times more than our regular revenue.

The biggest insight or the biggest thing for a D2C brand is trust. That gave us that trust. Correct.

Second, my belief was that if you are going there, there is no loss. You are getting free marketing. And that marketing is worth almost 4-5 crores.

Sure. Amazing. And then, obviously, it starts declining.

But, our base which was there earlier, and the peak which we saw, we somewhere came in between that and stabilized it. Which was very important. Your tangent kind of got reset to a higher number.

Absolutely. How many users did you acquire? I think, daily, we were acquiring easily 3-4,000 new customers.

Customers? Yes. The impact of that brand, is it still felt today?

Absolutely, yes. I mean, we launched our first store in Jainagar. Not on a very premium high street.

It is a very offbeat location in Jainagar. We just sent out messages to our existing customers saying that, hey boss, we are launching our store in Jainagar, Bangalore, this Saturday. By 4 o'clock, the store was flocked.

And I can bet you, the sort of revenue we are doing in that one single store, no brand has ever done it. Last month, just the store alone did 1. 25 crores in net sales.

Just one single store, which is 2200 square feet. Amazing. Are you opening up more?

Yeah, so this year, we plan to open at least 7-8 stores. Bangalore or Gujarat? Gujarat.

I find your designs to be really cool. How do you go about coming up with these designs? How do you make them?

Do you do it in-house? Yeah, we do it in-house. It would be even better if I could walk you down and take you through that entire process.

Can we do it now? So basically, this is our design and textile flow where all the magic happens. We have a design team which actually curates new designs every single day.

We have a sampling unit there which actually makes all those samples. And then we have a weekly huddle wherein we would go through all the designs that were created and tested out in the real market. How many people are there in your design team?

We have about 4-5 people in the design team. And then there is a catalogue team which is actually responsible for all the catalogues that happen online across all the marketplaces. So the design team designs, the merchandise team makes the demo product, the MVP team makes it.

Then there is a production team which takes care of the production. So all the products that are made are based outside because they have to travel across different factories. And then once the product is made, it comes to the catalogue team which is responsible for the photoshoot, to the edits.

Then it goes to the marketing team which will actually work on what sort of content to be built across different products. So what is your highest sold SKU or individual product till now? I think our most sold would be very strange till date.

And in t-shirts and all of that? I think oversized t-shirts are doing really well now for us. Let's check out some.

Can I take any of them? All yours, if you wear them. So this is like a new jacket again being inspired by a lot of embroidery.

This is a Japanese styled hair kick? Yeah, Korean. From designing to it hitting your store, it takes about 25-30 days max.

So are there cases where when you made a design you looked at the sample and said the design was good but it doesn't look good. I think out of 10-15 designs that we create only about 3 or 4 of the best would go out for production. And even in production, the advantage that we have is that we make very few quantities.

So we start with 50-80 pieces and then the tech behind it will actually give us signals at different stages of that product. It will exactly tell us the rate of sale for the 3rd day how many pieces to make, the sizes the lead time it will calculate all of that and throw that number to the merchandising team. What do you consider a product to be successful?

How many units to sell? In what time for you to say that, oh we got a winner? I think a lot of things happen like the first 7 days matter a lot.

So what was the traction in the first 7 days? If there was traction, what was the conversion rate? On the basis of conversion rate, it again comes up, how many pieces were sold?

If there are 10 pieces plus, then we consider it to be good. In a week? In a day.

And if it goes above 20, then it is a hit. And there are a lot of products which sell almost 300-500 a day. Wow!

How many orders do you make per day? Approximately 12,000 currently. How is the logistics managed?

We have 3 warehouses in Bangalore. One is ours which is at 35-40,000 sq. The other one we partnered with a couple of vendors in Bangalore itself.

So overall 3 warehouses. Now we are building our biggest warehouse in Yelunka which is going to be 1 lakh sq. So every product is shipped from Bangalore to the country?

Absolutely yes. I wanted to know the process of how you come up with these crazy ideas of design and all. Is it data driven?

Is it data input? What is the trend, what is the pattern, what is the style, where are the places that we can look at, where do you guys look at, where do you get signals from? So we follow a lot of global brands plus there are certain institutions like WGSN etc.

Like I told you right, it's not like we have a third eye. Every brand is looking at that, every person in this industry is doing that. But it is largely towards how soon can you get it out.

Studying so many global trends, we would know what fit is going on. How do we infuse that international aspect to Indian body types and make that product a hit is very important right. Because Indian body type is very different, the climatic conditions are very different here.

People's preference is different, cost is a parameter. So with the input of all these things, we arrive on designing one particular product. But your content is also very strong.

How big is the team, can you run me through the content? In the content team we have almost 17 people, which is again divided in different roles. Like few are looking just at influencer marketing, some are just making videos, some are just working on meme or UGC sort of content.

So it is a combination of a lot of things. There are marketing, there is design team. So the first floor is all customer support, so that is the most boring floor.

The second floor is all about textile design, sampling. Third floor is entirely towards shoot and plus a very nice recreational zone where people could chill. I saw the snooker table.

Snooker table, foosball etc. Fourth floor is marketing, fifth is finance and board rooms etc. And sixth is a cafeteria.

The whole team is how big? In this office? No, in this office you have around 70-80 people.

Overall it is about 200 plus now. As a founder I have this question, you have made a team of 200 people, I also have a similar situation. How do you set the culture right?

What are the things that you do uniquely to yourself to set the culture right? The number one thing for us is that when we are in a meeting room or board room, it is very different. And the moment I step out, I am a different personality, so are you.

So we have set that culture from day one. You are the same person everywhere. Yes, I am accessible to the person sitting in the warehouse who is doing the packing also.

Right. And I was looking at your catalogue and I saw a lot of US or non-Indian models. Is that something which is common?

What is its impact? Why are there no Indian models? Why are there international models?

When we started, we always had that aspiration element, right? First of all, why do we exist? That's the number one question, right?

Today, you cannot expect an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old or a 25-year-old to buy from Allen Solly or Louis Philips. They can't resonate with the brand. Correct.

Now for that, what is the other option? H&M, Zara, Upwards, there are a lot of brands on the market place. Correct.

So the number one reason why we exist is because what people want is not available at the price point that they expect. And I think that is a very important element for us. Interesting.

No man, this has been super insightful. Should we go down again? Yeah, absolutely.

Let's conclude now. The first thing is that we have discussed in the entire podcast that how someone can start their own D2C in Apparel or any other business from your learning. Right?

Now for the business, that is Apparel and merchandising and all, if I have to start for this, what is the minimum investment that I would need? I think there is no need for investment if you just start. My number one advice to everyone is to start.

There are a lot of people in India who make a plan at night and get flushed out in the morning. Right? And it is a fact.

That is true. So I think the number one thing is to start. And it is not necessary that if you want to do something, you have to start it with a bang or it should be very big.

Right? It is very easy these days. If you can sell a product on WhatsApp, then you go to Instagram from WhatsApp.

From Instagram, you will go to the website. It is a journey. It is not possible that you could build anything overnight or in like 2 years, 4 years.

Everything. I mean, whoever is watching the story of the niche, it is just successful because of the playbook that happened 10 years back. Right.

That part was very important for this to happen so easily and swiftly. So I think number one advice is to start. Second is choose your niche.

Right? Which specific audience will you target? What do they want?

Right? And how do you fill that gap? Right.

That's the most important point. Third is customer experience. That is like the ultimate thing from and customer experience means everything.

Right? That is actually branding. If you are opening a store, how is your security guard opening the door?

How is your salesman greeting you? To that entire experience of your trial rooms, you know, walking, are you actually pushing someone to buy some product or just leaving them alone? So I think a lot of experience for offline, it is very different.

For online, it is more towards how do you communicate good video contents, you know, really work well for us because you're visually seeing something. Make it really crisp and short. If you can narrate a story through that, you know, works wonders.

Brilliant. It was great having a chat with you. Absolutely.

Wish you all luck. And I'm sure all the people watching this video learned it. And I personally did.

Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks for accommodating.

Thanks for having me. And good luck. Thanks.

Thanks a lot.