THE INSIDE STORY

From leader to challenger, Rupa & Company is shifting gears to reclaim its disruptor tag in India’s innerwear market.

- DEBOJYOTI GHOSH

AROUND THE TIME KOLKATA-headquartered innerwear and outerwear clothing manufacturer Rupa & Company set up shop, in 1968, the Indian hosiery market was dominated by unorganised players, barring a few strong local brands such as Dora, Asli Hira and Asli Sona. So much so that “everyone in the hosiery business then was talking about hira (diamond) and sona (gold),” Prahlad Rai Agarwala, the company’s 80-year-old chairman and executive director, tells Fortune India. “So we decided to go with chandi (silver).” Which translates to rupo or rupa in Bengali.

The name, as everything else, was driven by a need to differentiate and yet belong, because it was a tough market. Brand Dora dominated, he recalls. “No hosiery store would sell anything else but Dora,” he says.

To break through, they relied on two principles.

Innovation, for one. In the early ’70s, for instance, Rupa launched elastic strap underwear for men, a shift from the cotton rope string variety widely sold till then.

Discipline and an undeterred work ethic, for the other. Rai believes it is their never-say-die attitude that has got the company, No. 221 on the Fortune India Next 500 list this year, this far. Consider the challenges he faced upfront.

Rupa first started selling its men’s vests in Patna, Bihar, a densely populated market with high demand for vests (baniyans). Men’s briefs and women’s innerwear followed a few years later, in the mid-’70s. “I would travel in general class coaches to Patna and most of the time would sleep in the narrow passage next to the toilet,” says Rai. The response time from stores—to give a nod to Rupa—was long, but, “despite that, I would convince shop owners. Slowly we got a grip of the market and moved to other states.”