Stitching Success

By focusing on efficiency and using technology, Kolkata-based Vedant Fashions’ Ravi Modi has built a pan-India ethnic wear brand in Manyavar

- Aveek Datta

Instead of the usual Mr or Ms, any email sent by an employee of Vedant Fashions Pvt Ltd (VFPL)—the Kolkata-based company that makes and sells ethnic apparel branded Manyavar— carries the salutation manyavar (eminent) before the name of the recipient; and the correspondence signs off with a namaskar. Staying with the Indian-ness that is at the core of the Manyavar brand, Ravi Modi, the 40-year-old founder and chairman of the company, is referred to by employees as bhaiya, the Hindi address for an older brother.

Rooted in this sense of tradition, VFPL has successfully built a sizeable business for itself by exploiting a gap in the Indian fashion retail industry—the presence of organised players (beyond high fashion) in the ethnic wear market: A segment that is estimated to be worth ₹80,000 crore and is characterised by small, standalone regional players.

Ethnic wear retailers often fail to gain scale because apparel such as sherwanis, kurtas and lehengas are mostly bought and worn during festive occasions, which makes it a seasonal affair. But Modi, who used to work in his family’s garments store in Kolkata’s AC Market on Shakespeare Sarani, saw the “opportunity of a lifetime” in building a scaleable brand in this niche segment. In the late 1990s, the concept of men’s ethnic wear had seemed antiquated, says Modi in an email interview to Forbes India. “I saw it differently—more like an opportunity of a lifetime; not only to build a business but also to change men’s fashion in the country.”