THE RECIPES FOR VALUE CREATION

At the 22nd edition of India Fashion Forum (IFF) held between February 28 and March 01, 2023 at Conard Bengaluru, several brand custodians shared their strategic moves that veered their businesses toward profitability. The session was conducted by Bijou Kurien, Chairman, Retailers Association of India.

"Shobitam is one of the fastest growing D2C ethnic fashion brands serving tens of thousands of customers across 40-plus countries. We are here to make a difference with rich technology. We work directly at the grassroots levels and believe in preserving our tradition.

We are women-led and have partnered with BITS Pilani and have created the Shobhitam Center for women entrepreneurship. This is the first-of-its-kind in India, which aims at honing and building women entrepreneurs to close the gender gap." - Aparna Thyagarajan, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer, Shobitam

"I represent the youngest initiative of Landmark Group, which is Easybuy. As we entered smaller markets, there were a lot of challenges. In Landmark, we believe in profitability so there were lot of innovations. Focus on small towns, partnering with MSME suppliers so that they can get products at affordable prices and run a tight operation across small formats proved to be extremely productive." - Anand Aiyer, CEO - Easybuy, Max Retail Division, Lifestyle International

"We are still a new brand as we launched about a year ago. We are a ready-to-wear brand. Within three months, Vogue had contacted us for a cover shoot and Madhuri Dixit wore our jeans. The response was great. I feel being present in front of the right market and collaborating with the right people has helped us a lot to grow." - Ananya Rajguru, Founder/Creative Director, Missfit

"I started my company 30 years ago, and currently we have a portfolio of 70 EPOS (electronic point of sale) across Reebok, Pepe and Madame and a distribution business across several brands of around Rs 100 crore. PR (public relations) with retailers, good excellent service, secondary focus and fair dealings with all retailers helped us to build our business." - Ajay Jain, Director, Basic Clothing