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Nidhi Agarwal, the Founder of the young but popular online apparel brand, KAARYAH, shares with us the secret to growing a brand fast.
What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
Vision, Execution, Confidence and Leadership.
Nidhi Agarwal, Founder of KAARYAH, a fast-growing western apparel brand for women, is one such entrepreneur. A Chartered Accountant, she also has a MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management. She gained tremendous industry experience as a Strategy and Marketing Consultant with Bain and Co and thereafter at Honeywell.
Over a casual afternoon chat, Nidhi spoke to me with a zeal that cannot help but impress the listener.
Nidhi founded KAARYAH in 2013, and since then there has been no looking back for her. She understood the need for well fitted, functional, feminine and fashion-forward Western formal wear in India. There was a large unmet need for such apparel among women across age groups, no matter what their occupation was. She therefore focused on bridging the gap between western formals and the Indian silhouette.
For any startup, the big challenge is to acquire the first set of customers. Nidhi and her team interviewed around 250 women to know what the real issue with fit was all about. She built her prototypes by sampling the measurements taken from 1500+ women. With all the data, and training as an Analytics professional, Nidhi feels that it was not tough to target customers with the right product that met their expectations. This made their test marketing a super success with very high conversion rates.
According to Nidhi, for any startup to flourish, the vision is very crucial. She tells me that to decide clearly on what one needs to achieve, and investing the right amount of money at the right time is the key to fast growth for any startup.
“Customer behavior and preferences are the driving force for any business. As the market changes there will be many more tactics and channels coming up and of course, technology will always play a major role in marketing”, adds Nidhi.
She reveals that KAARYAH was among the first companies to start trunk and corporate shows for marketing. Strong social media presence too has helped KAARYAH to evolve as a brand.
Any startup is a huge learning experience, and as an entrepreneur one needs to avoid some grave mistakes. Nidhi believes that any entrepreneur should think deeply about the product fit in the market; she also states that the commonly held belief that one has to spend huge amounts of money for branding is a myth.
Quiz her more about how she achieved branding KAARYAH without any paid channels at the outset and she responds, “Mitigating the unmet need itself is a responsibility any product has, and once this is done, the customers are bound to follow”.
With that philosophy, it is not surprising that investors such as Ratan Tata and Mohandas Pai subsequently funded KAARYAH.
Being a woman entrepreneur, Nidhi is happy to be a part of the #BreakingBarriers events coming up shortly and share her insights with others.
Hearing this inspiring woman’s journey from her in person is surely going to be one of the highlights of the day. Join us at Bangalore, and at Gurgaon too!
Akshata Desai is a digital marketing enthusiast and mom currently charting her own return to work path. read more...
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People say that women are the greatest enemies of women. I vehemently disagree. It is the patriarchal mindset that makes women believe in the wrong ideology.
The entire world celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8, 2024. It should be a joyful day, but unfortunately, not all women are entitled to this privilege, as violence against women is at its peak. The experience of oppression pushes many women to choose freedom. As far as patriotism is concerned, feminism is not a cup of tea in this society.
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14 years after her last feature film Dhobi Ghat, storyteller extraordinaire comes up with her new film, Laapataa Ladies, a must watch.
*Some spoilers alert*
Every religion around the world dictates terms to women. The onus is always on women to be ‘modest’ and cover their faces and bodies so men can’t be “tempted”, rather than on men to keep their eyes where they belong and behave like civilized beings. So much so that even rape has been excused on the grounds of women eating chowmein or ‘men will be men’. I think the best Hindi movie retort to this unwanted advice on ‘akeli ladki khuli tijori ki tarah hoti hai’ (an alone woman is like an open jewellery box) came from Geet in Jab We Met – Kya aap gyan dene ke paise lete hain kyonki chillar nahin hain mere paas.
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