Here's to the Crazy Ones

How a clutch of online-first brands has disrupted the traditional way of doing business by shunning the herd mentality and listening to their heart

- Rajiv Singh

In 1999, when K Vaitheeswaran, along with his five friends, started Fabmart—India’s first ecommerce company—the entrepreneur was treading a new path. “It was so new that I was always in doubt if ecommerce is a hyphenated or non-hyphenated word,” he recalls. When Fabmart launched music cassettes, Vaithee invited his friends to buy a cassette. “I thought it would help us in getting the business to move,” he says. Most of his friends did oblige, but had one common query: “Please give us the address. We will come and buy.” Vaithee persisted, and believed that online will take off in the country.

Three years later, in 2002, Fabmart was renamed Fabmall, with an offline avatar as well. The move worked. The brick and mortar business took off and, in 2006, it was bought by the Aditya Birla Group and renamed More. Meanwhile, Vaithee changed the name of the online part of Fabmall to IndiaPlaza, which finally got shuttered in December 2013. The online nightmare continued.

Two decades later, in 2019, the serial entrepreneur started dairy beverage brand Again Drinks. This time, Vaithee started offline, with a small online component. Reason: 90 percent retailing still happens offline in India. So far so good. Cut to the lockdown in March. Offline came to a grinding halt, and Vaithee went direct to consumers. “Now it feels like a homecoming,” he smiles.