It's a delicate dance being brothers and running a multi-crore business together. Talking to Gurugram-based brothers Nikhil and Nitin Mohan, co-founders of Indian menswear brand Blackberrys Menswear, will leave you with the impression that they've worked out how to accomplish this quite adeptly. "Early on in our childhood, we were each other's best friends. And so, when we came together as partners, those early values came to the fore," says Nitin, 56, the younger of the two, choosing to describe their operating style as "fire and ice; as today and tomorrow".
Born into a family that was in the business of textile retailing—the family owns the 142-year-old textile retail store chain Sriram and Son—the choice of business was natural. "Our father and uncles ran Sriram and Son (the original store is in Chandni Chowk), and so there was a love for fabrics and garments and customer interaction from the very beginning. In fact, during college years, we'd end up at the store more often than we wanted to," recalls Nikhil, 58, in this conversation taking place over a video call with the brothers on a Wednesday morning.
It was in September 1991, when the winds of economic liberalisation were blowing in India, that the brothers' independent vision took wing in the form of a self-funded, nascent venture in garment manufacturing called Blackberrys Menswear. Just in their early 20s, the brothers, who'd both graduated from NIFT Delhi with specialisations in apparel marketing and merchandising, got into the thick of things from the get go.
"We were 25 and 23, and instead of opting for the comfort of running our (family's) established stores in South Extension and Chandni Chowk, we chose to jump into the deep end. We went into the innards of the city like Okhla and Kotla to meet suppliers during the initial days of learning the business," Nikhil recalls.
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