Prime Minister Narendra Modi called upon Indians to be ‘vocal for local’ and the entire nation applauded this step that proved to be a boost for Indian entrepreneurs. It has promoted local businesses during COVID-19 and given customers the ability and motivation to shop locally with ease. This rebranded version of ‘Made In India’ has our support and every month, TC46 will spotlight small businesses and ventures you can champion and back easily through online and offline purchases.
Artists, entrepreneurs, visionaries and experts, Indian women are shattering glass ceilings and breaking out of boxes. Success, tied with skills and hard work, is what makes those featured in our list today an inspiration for many. And the journey, for these women of incredible talent, are stories that must be told.
This week, here are some local brands we’re cheering on; check them out!
Need some tips? Here’s how to start a tailoring business from home.
Rolling Dice
Mumbai and India, in general, saw a sudden rise in the board game space. With board game cafes opening up and groups of friends meeting for game nights, the sector was thriving. However, most of the games were imported which made them costlier than they needed to be. And that’s when two enthusiasts Pooja Shah and Yashna Kapasi started Rolling Dice—a board game rental service in Mumbai.
Pooja and Yashna saw a gap in the market and decided to take up this opportunity as a side hustle. What began as just a board game rental service has now turned into varied business verticals. Rolling Dice provides services from board games, card games, drinking games, and even host game nights for various occasions.
The brand also holds board game nights and competitions in many cafes and restaurants. They put up a board game stalls in exhibitions and flea markets, where people can rent games on an hourly basis. From The Lil Flea to Tapped, Sobo Flea and Sula Fest, this brand has been rendering its service everywhere. Rolling Dice also caters to corporate events, baby showers, birthday parties, house parties, pre-wedding cocktails and more, where they add interactive games and scavenger hunts to their base offering.
The rentals start from as low as Rs 150; they can be found on Facebook and Instagram.
Rugs And Beyond
Artist, writer and filmmaker Sakshi Talwar co-founded an award-winning e-commerce rug company. Today, she is working as the CEO of Rugs And Beyond and making heads turn.
The huge gap in the market was what birthed the idea for Rugs and Beyond. Sakshi completed her MBA in the U.S. and would see ‘Made in India’ products everywhere. She wanted to bridge the gap between local weavers and end customers, hence Rugs and Beyond was born in 2015.
The brand specialises in handmade rugs and carpets where each product is ‘one of a kind’, which is also one of their USPs. They do carpets in a variety of makes like wool, silk, and natural fibres, and they’re an environmentally-friendly company. They also accept custom orders from clients.
Rugs And Beyond’s target audience is homeowners, hospitality, residents, art collectors or simply anyone who is looking for ‘one of a kind’ handcrafted rugs and carpets.
The price of a handmade carpet depends on a variety of factors like size, colour, design, intricacy of craftsmanship involved and material. On average, the price is Rs 10,000 onwards. The products are available on their website and are shipped worldwide.
Vaidehi Paradkar Label
The idea of being a fashion designer germinated when Vaidehi Paradkar was just in the 8th grade! While she was still in her third year, studying the world of fashion, fabrics and creativity, she started designing and styling for her friends and family as a form of goodwill.
As soon as she got her degree, she created her own brand. Vaidehi Paradkar Label is all about fusion wear, where she mostly plays with ikat and other prints and weaves. Her motto is to create easy-to-wear garments and that’s why she only works with cotton.
The garments are free-flowing and soft to the touch. The brand is known for its array of products from sarees to ethnic dresses and kurtas to skirts. Her personal recommendations are the brand’s Patchwork Sarees.
Creating designer wear in an affordable price range is important to her. The brand’s range starts from Rs 900 to Rs 4,000. All her designs and products are available on Facebook and Instagram.
The Odd Factory
The Odd Factory is a one-stop complete solution for all garment and fashion manufacturing requirements for people within India and across the globe. It follows three simple steps: O.D.D (Order, Design, Dispatch).
They receive an Order, create and ideate with the client upon Design, manufacture the same and once ready, Dispatch the goods as the name ODD suggests, pun intended. They’re the only fashion factory in India that focuses more on bespoke production than MOQs. The brand co-works with the client upon designs, suggests zero-waste solutions, provides alternative solutions to help them save production costs and ideates for an efficient production line to provide an upcycling solution too.
An M.Sc. Econometrics, Karishma Kapur, the founder, was always passionate about creating sustainable fashion. Established in 2010 with her family’s support, she is helped by a team of women which includes her sisters Chandni and Turiya, and her production head Arpana Ahluwalia. She scaled the business into a 5,000sq ft factory, entirely led by women and with 50+ karigars.
Some of the services provided by the brand include complete fashion manufacturing solutions, custom hand and machine embroidery, customised digital fabric painting and fabric button making, brand label manufacturing and upcycling and repurposing solutions to ensure zero waste production lines. They also do kids’ wear, women’s western wear, resort wear, AW, SS collection, pet clothing and fabric-based products like tote bags, masks, and fashion accessories like belts and headbands.
The brand’s main target audience is fashion designers, artists wanting to print their artwork onto fabrics or develop fabric-based products for sale along with entrepreneurs who have little technical or creative know-how of the fashion industry but want to create a collection, range of fabric-based products, and enter private label merchandising. They also work with international and local designers and artists and other private label brands.
Being a slow-fashion bespoke factory, the sampling and mass-manufacturing quotations entirely depend upon the client’s order. They break all these barriers for their clients by co-creating with them quality fashion that’s sustainable, bespoke, yet pocket-friendly.
Want us to be Vocal For Local for your brand or know someone whose work you’d like to cheer on? Drop us an email to be featured on The Channel 46 at [email protected].