Top 10 Fashion Startups

The style and Fashion Sense of any individual can tell a lot about them, in fact, this is taking up yet another way of self-expression these days. With rapidly growing options in the market to choose from, inspired from, new ideas, and people’s confidence to try new things is also growing. 

 

On the other hand, there are groups who are very particular about their traditions and they are wilful about promoting and revitalizing the traditional and un-mashed-up forms of clothing. 

 

Now, in a world that is full of ideas of ‘what to wear’ there are significant people who choose to provide you with those options ranging from traditional to western to comfort to trends, they wish to bring to you their ideas of fashion and provide you with a choice to pick which one you like the most. 

 

Speaking of fashion, check out our blog on IoT in Fashion

 

This is how fashion startups work. Here is a list of 10 leading fashion startups that have rapidly occupied their space in the Indian and U.S industry.

 

India Based Fashion Startups

 

1. ADITRI
    

The New Delhi-based company Aditri (Sanskrit name for goddess Lakshmi) which was started in 2018 by Pratima, is a fashion startup that sells sarees, jewelry, dupattas, and handmade art and crafts. 

 

They say that their idea is “to give you a genuine and yet modern interpretation of Indian crafts.”

 

The Aditri creations are handmade and can be seen on their website where they deliver it to their customers. They are crafted by various artisans throughout India, who are trained and hired by the same company and due to this are able to sustain and provide for their livelihood. 

 

 

2. NEEDLEDUST
    

Traditionally, the New Delhi-based 2014 founded company provides classic handmade juttis.  

 

“We like to believe that when you are purchasing Needledust, you are purchasing an heirloom.” says the founder of the company, Shirin Mann Sangha who also describes herself as “an accidental entrepreneur.”

Needledust has three retail stores; two in Delhi and one in Chandigarh; and an online exclusive online e-commerce store that ships worldwide. 

 

Speaking of e-commerce, check out our blog on IoT in ecommerce. 

 

The juttis which are available in 100+ designs are adored by the most sought-after B Town beauties like Sonam Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Alia Bhatt.

 

3. ZIVAME
    

  “If you are strong, focused and passionate about what you want to do, everything
falls in place.” 

- Richa Kar.

 

Richa Kar is a then MBA student who founded the founder online lingerie shopping startup called Zivame in 2011, which is a Hebrew word meaning radiance. 

 

Now that we mentioned startups, learn what is a unicorn startup here. 

Interestingly, this brand was started owing to the embarrassment that surrounds women while lingerie shopping in India as many lingerie stores had male salespeople.

 

Zivame also partnered with several other brands like Jockey, Amante, Triumph and several media channels that launched Zivame bra advertisements that created awareness among women of having the privilege to do bra shopping from the comfort of their homes (...and being able to return them too!).

 

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Top fashion startups

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4. AKS CLOTHING
   
    

Aks Clothing (which means reflection) was started by an Indore based woman Nidhi Yadav when she was merely 25 and also a mother to a 7 month old. As there is a wide belief that a woman’s career graph becomes stagnant after starting a family, Nidhi strongly believed in the opposite. So it's not surprising that Nidhi was awarded the 'Young Women Entrepreneur for Apparel Brand Start Up' by Indian Women Convention & Women Leadership for this brand in 2018. 

This ethnic cloth brand AKS, which sells kurtas, sarees and lehengas was started in 2014 is currently available in almost all the big fashion online stores like Myntra and Flipkart.
 

 

5. VAJOR
   
    

The fashion and lifestyle brand, which started operations in 2014 was founded by Nathasha AR Kumar and has been doing really well because of the idea to build a gap between off the rack clothing and luxurious items.

 

They bring to their customers clothing, shoes and accessories.  With its 85% of the business coming from Delhi NCR, the product holds a strong base in metro cities.  

 

Within 4 years the brand has diversified its products to not only clothing for men and women but also shoes, accessories and the latest- home décor. 

Vajor also claims to be inclined towards the core idea of sustainability by removing the plastic packaging, paperless billing, and switching to paper bags and digital billings.
 

 

6. PASTELS AND POP
    

Pastel and Pop were started originally as a webstore by 3 sisters to sell leather juttis. This Bangalore based company was founded in 2015, is now making a global name with their quirky names to their juttis like flower power and dancing peacock and what makes Pastels and Pop even more special is the abundance of the colours they come in unlike traditional brown juttis.

Leather is dominantly used in their designs with faux leather for the insides. However, they are also planning to launch vegan juttis . Also, the trio after having successfully made it to the Hindu story in 2019 also aims for an offline store in Bangalore.
 

 

7. FLYROBE 
    

Flyrobe is a Mumbai based fashion rental startup where you can rent premium brands and designer wear at a comparatively lower price of their retail price. This unique idea of a rental platform where the customer does not need to buy the product to be able to use it, was propounded by 3 IIT Bombay graduates Shreya Mishra, Tushar Saxena, and Pranay Surana in 2015.

 

This rental platform offers free pick up, delivery and advance booking for custom fitted ethnic wear, western wear and men’s wear and these are widely used by bollywood celebrities like Huma Qureishi, Parineeti Chopra, Sunny Leone as seen on social media .
 

 

US Based Startups:

 

8. WARBY PARKER
   
    

“The idea was really based on two simple premises. One is that a pair of glasses should not cost more than an iPhone, and two, that eyeglasses could effectively be sold online.” 

 -Gilboa

 

Warby Parker was founded by four college students from Wharton, Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt, David Gilboa, and Jeffrey Raider, in 2010. 

 

It’s a Philadelphia  based company which chose to sell customizable eyewear online and due to its growing popularity within a year of its launch, Vogue covered the story which also helped the company with it’s Marketing .Moreover as the company focussed primarily on the customer’s specific needs it helped it even more in growing. 

 

Holiday Spectacle Bazar was the company's  first offline store in SoHo and concurrently this holds over 15 physical stores. 

 

 

9. REBAG

 

Rebag is an online platform on which the customers can buy or sell designer luxury handbags Hermes and Gucci at half of the product’s original price . This was founded by CEO Charles Albert Gorra and former CMO Erwan Delacroix, under the parent company Trendly Incorporated in 2014. 

 

This also launched the fair tool for Clair AI, a revolutionary image recognition technology that can identify and price luxury handbags with an automated calculation. 

 

In 2020, Rebag expanded into luxury watches, jewelry.  This success led the company to be featured in a lot of business magazines like Vogue and New York Times. 

 

 

10.  THREAD

 

In online shopping images are everything when it comes to selling the product. This London based startup founded in 2012 by Kieran O'Neill. 

 

Thread is an online fashion platform for women and men but the thing that makes it exciting and provides it with an edge is the algorithm it launched in 2019 called Thimble. 

 

Thimble is an AI algorithm built by this  startup on a mission to make dressing well easier and more accessible. Think of it like a personal stylist but without having to leave the sofa or endure any awkward chit chat. 

 

Today, Thread is improving the wardrobes of around half a million customers,  Thread had been doing a lot of online performance marketing but the business had got to the point where it really needed to scale up and build more of an emotional connection with its customers to be able to excel more.
 

 

Conclusion

 

As fashion has its own dimensions and meanings just like that every startup and that comes up with an idea to give the customers an option to choose from has a story to tell. 

 

Ranging from where the idea hails to where the idea wishes to take the brand is an exciting journey in itself that not only comprises the founder but also of the loyal and experimental buyers of the same brand.