Episode 75: Business Breakdown of Indian B2B Textile Industry w/Mayank Tiwari
About Mayank Tiwari:
Success in the textile industry is not just about fabrics and threads; it's about empowering communities and redefining the way we connect with our roots.
Welcome to The One Percent Project, where we bring you the stories of exceptional leaders who have achieved extraordinary success in their fields. In this episode, we speak to Mayank Tiwari, Founder & CEO of ReshaMandi, a natural fibre venture from Bharat (India), along with my co-host Sarthak Ahuja. Sarthak is an Investment Banking M&A expert, Virtual CFO, Author, and ISB Gold Medalist.
Mayank Tiwari's saga is one of resilience, ingenuity, and unwavering commitment to transforming the textile industry. As the mastermind behind ReshaMandi, he has forged a path where tradition intertwines seamlessly with innovation, revolutionising the way we perceive and engage with fabrics.
Join us as we dive into the fascinating story of ReshaMandi. Mayank shares the challenges of the natural fibre industry, the social impact his company has made in the space, and the exciting future ahead.Listen in as Sarthak and I explore the origins of ReshaMandi, commitment to social welfare, and visionary path forging.
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Key takeaways:
India's stagnant production of natural fibres is the result of a lack of traceability and compliance in the textile supply chain. International markets, like the EU and the U.S., have started implementing regulations that require brands to ensure sustainability, traceability, and adherence to labour and environmental standards. Brands that fail to comply with these regulations have faced legal consequences. However, India has been slower in adopting and implementing such measures, which has hindered its emergence as a major production hub.
India needs a platform or infrastructure to penetrate the entire supply chain, assure compliance, and take responsibility for non-compliance issues. By addressing these challenges and offering a transparent and compliant supply chain, India could tap into the latent demand and boost its production capabilities.
The fashion industry is constantly evolving with micro trends, major data trends, and contemporary classics, but it faces the challenge of aligning fashion forecasts with the diverse body types and cultural backgrounds of the Indian population.
The power of a brand can vary, with some brands having such strong customer loyalty that they can charge premium prices without significant advertising, while others operating in price-sensitive markets offering products at lower price points and hence being concerned with cost efficiency in supply chains.
The silk market in India, which is valued at $10 billion, has the potential to grow to a $75 billion industry. With scientific advancements, improved farming practices, and investments in the industry, this prediction can be materialised.
Fab India's story exemplifies the successful combination of social welfare and creating a brand that works closely with handloom weavers. Fab India's journey showcases its ability to impart ground intelligence, support livelihoods, and create a beautiful brand that has become an integral part of everyday life for many people.
ReshaMandi provides value by sourcing quality products at the right price and time, ensuring transparency and increasing efficiency. They offer demand diversification, merchandising insights, process automation, and financing and insurance options. By addressing the working capital challenges in the textile industry and providing credit and insurance solutions, ReshaMandi aims to improve the profitability and sustainability of the entire supply chain while generating revenue through its services.
In this conversation, he talks about:
00:00 Intro
02:49 India’s association with natural fibre.
08:45 India’s fibre consumption pattern and Challenges in scaling production of natural fibre.
19:20 How does fashion get influenced?
25:35 Reshamandi’s focus areas and route to profitability.
40:12 Why is the mulberry leaf mentioned in the Vedas?
51:27 Why is Mayank and Saurabh best placed in building Reshamandi?
56:33 Will Reshmandi become a monopoly such as Amazon, where new players will find it harder to enter the space?
1:02:24 Why has Reshmandi expanded from silk to other natural fibres?
1:06:46 What are the available white spaces within the fabric/ textile industry?
1:09:33 Evolution and contribution of Fab India.
Transcript:
Pritish: Sarthak, tell me about the shirt that you're wearing.
Sarthak: It's a basic H&M, really. You know the brand that Sabyasachi recently collaborated with, so I'm quite a diva when it comes to fashion.
Pritish: You wrote an interesting post about natural fibers, silk farming, and ReshaMandi, which was fascinating, and that's how we connected. Do you ever think about the fibre that actually goes into making all our clothes? Now that could be a basic shirt like yours or a designer brand like Sabyasachi probably uses it in making all those expensive Lehengas.
Sarthak: I think almost never. The only idea I would have about the origin of the thread of the fabric is that I mostly prefer to wear cotton, and cotton comes from a lot of the apparel from Cambodia and Vietnam and these Southeast Asian countries. But apart from that, I've no idea. I'm not wearing any Benarasi Sarees anyway, so I can't say where it's from.
Pritish: And won't it be interesting if we figured out how that works and how intriguing that whole process is from Farm to Yarn?
Sarthak: Sustainable fashion is becoming such a big thing, and that is probably why companies like Shein and, in fact, other fast fashion companies like Zara and H&M, again, have received a bad reputation. But apart from that, how I discovered ReshaMandi was quite interesting. I was staying with a friend who works in venture debt, and we were trying to test each other's knowledge about interesting startups for Bharat. He threw a question at me, which was, do you know this B2B startup for Bharat, which did more than 400 Crores of revenue in the second year of operations and crossed 2000 Crores in the third year, is almost at break-even? I could have never guessed that this would be a startup solving for B2B supply chains in the silk industry, which turned out to be ReshaMandi. So, when I dug deeper to find out more insights on the business and what they were really solving for, and if the market was really this big, I found so many facts which I couldn't stop myself from sharing with my audience on LinkedIn and Instagram. And that's how we connected, which is great.
Pritish: Welcome to episode 75 of The One Percent Project, the podcast that delves into the ideas and insights of the most innovative minds, pushing boundaries to create a meaningful impact. I'm Pritish Sanyal, and I'm Sarthak Ahuja. We are your hosts, and to dive deep into the banter you just heard before this, we invited Mayank, the co-founder of ReshaMandi, to talk about the natural fibre industry, the unit economics of the business, the challenges, and the opportunities. He talks about FabIndia, Levi’s, and much more. So, we kicked it off by asking Mayank about India's association with natural fibre.
Mayank: India has been an agrarian society, primarily. Our farmers have tried everything. They've tried pulses, potatoes, and tomatoes. They've also tried natural fibres. Now natural fibres as a story. If you see, India is a cotton-producing state. We've been a wool-producing state. Silk to India was introduced around the Indus Valley, so that is also a very ancient history here. Most of the farmers look for a climate basis, which they define whether they want to go for a cash crop or they want to go for something which is more pulses and potatoes, tomatoes, or something, which is known to the rest of the farmers who are in their business. Most of these farmers who have started working on cotton or silk have started working on it primarily because these cash drops from a per acre yield basis can generate a higher return for them. So, if you go to Maharashtra today, and you will ask the cotton farmer why do you do this, they'll talk about how the crop gets ruined because of rains, droughts, this, that, everything but they still continue to do it or they continue to decide the crop basis, the rotation of the crop. So, sometimes they'll do our soya bean, sometimes they'll do cotton, sometimes something else. They'll continue to rotate the crop deciding as to what is giving them a better yield and a better return. While in silk’s case, it's completely different. If the farmer has gone into silk, he has planted mulberry on his plantation. From that point on, the moment you're planting a sapling of mulberry, it continues for 25 years. It's almost like you would have eaten ‘shehtoot’ in childhood. ‘Shehtoot’ is nothing but mulberry, so it's exactly the same thing. It's just that the farmer has to cut it at the shrub level to be able to feed the tender leaves to the silkworm rather than making it a tree. That's it. Otherwise, it continues for 25-30 years. It has a lifespan. If you make it a tree, it has a better lifespan than that. So, if the farmer has planted mulberry, they don't rotate any crop. They continue to foster with silkworms. Go towards the shepherd community of wool. And again, the same thing. You will realise that if they are shepherds, it's their either primary or secondary income. It's not their tertiary income. Now, most of these shepherds are Banjara tribes. They're nomadic tribes. They're moving around, and because they're moving around, they're not owning lands. And if they're not owning lands, the only primary occupation they're doing is either to cultivate whenever, wherever they are, a small portion of it, or to be able to use their sheep as the return on investment. So, every natural fibre has its own different stories as to why farmers choose to go with them. India has a very long history around them, but India in between, if you look at our industrial revolution, so to say, that has happened in India. I'm not talking about the English industrial revolution. Our industrial revolution happened primarily after our independence, and then from that point on till the 70s and 80s, we were still exploring what to industrialise. In that industrialisation, we industrialised textiles in India. Look at our older textile mills, which were there during East India companies and Britisher’s period. We were primarily cotton-producing mills. We shifted, pivoted, and moved towards polyester. Now we are a petrochemical, big-bagged industry, which has a heavy-duty reliance. The name itself defines this industrialisation. The industry shifted, and hence the farmers of India, the people producing natural fibres, went into oblivion because the government started giving out schemes on mf, primarily manmade fibres. The schemes on natural fibres were few and far between. There was no industrialization or no practice of increasing productivity or efficiency there, hence the oblivion and hence us not getting international orders and our exports shrinking; hence in silk, why is India the number two producer and number one consumer? We are still an import-deficit country. We still rely on China to give us some silk for our Benarasi weaver to produce a Benarasi Saree. The reason is that after the industrial revolution and after us shifting our focus to man-made fibres, this whole industry took a very different shape. If you ask anyone today which brand they would like to buy natural fibre from, they will say, I want to buy it from Suta, Bombay, because they are coming up with a story that defines that it's a hand-spun yarn and a handloom. We were, but it's not that story. It's an industrialised practice. It's been there for very long. Raymond uses wool and the jackets you wear. Nobody talks about that story. That's the story and not the story of these marginalised sectors. We are not trying to create a brand on the back of saying these people need support. That's not the story. The story is that everybody has a P&L. Everybody has a profit and loss account, which adds to their profitability, and everybody becomes part of their ecosystem.
Pritish: I have a very dear friend and probably one of my oldest friends, his family business is in “astar ka kapda” (sheath cloth), his father and he started coming to China a lot, and I asked him why are you coming here? He said that people wear jackets on bikes to obstruct dust. People have stopped using wool. And they have started to get into jackets, which are basically made of polyester, and all of that is actually coming or sourced, some raw material or the finished product from China. Then I realised that not only the stories that you're talking about but also the consumption pattern of the consumer has changed. So, definitely, the farmer in India probably is getting marginalised in multiple ways. Having said that, you talked about silk. I think in 2015 or 2016, China was like 5x more in production compared to India. China, I think, has considerably reduced, but Indian production hasn't grown that much. So, what are the reasons for it? And given that you are building that infrastructure, what are the challenges? And you're saying that India is a self-deficit market?
Mayank: So first about the consumption pattern, then I'll come to as to why the shift has not happened and automatically us getting the demand in. The first part, the consumption part, has changed, and it has changed over the course of every 10 years. The consumption pattern changes if you really look at the fashion industry, even in India. Sarees, I'm not going international because that's out of context for Reshamandi. I'll come to the international context, but from the domestic standpoint, look at Sarees. If you were a kid, possibly in the early eighties, or late eighties, it was Parag Sarees and Vimal Sarees and all those garden Sarees, possibly all your satin, polyester satin, silk satin that were flourishing in the market. At that time, the Surat industry came up. They created brands. Then all of a sudden, in the nineties, there was a shift because people, our heroines, started wearing georgettes and chiffons. All our moms and grandmoms wanted to wear those georgettes, chiffons, and, again, polyester-backed. When they married, if you look at their history, you'll realise their wardrobe is filled with Benarasi silks and Kanjivarams. They weren't wearing these chiffons and polyester. So that shift has happened. Then came the early two thousand, when we started printing. We started doing surface ornamentation, embroideries, and then we mechanised that. Initially, it was hand done. We had chicken-kaari and we had lovely embroideries across India. We didn't use them; we just replicated them, put them on to computerised embroideries, and that's what we got into our wardrobe. And today, it's finally, when we talk about the last decade, you will see that there is a change in mindset that is happening in the consumer where people have started going and asking the brands as to where they are sourcing this from. If you are a tanera, you need to tell me that this Dharmavaram is actually Dharmavaram. They're paying you 30,000 rupees for this. Thank God for that. At least the communities will not suffer because somebody is creating a brand on the back of their plight. Now, coming to the international side, the story that you've said, people started wearing these coverups, I'm also wearing a t-shirt that's possibly recycled polyester. But at least it's a recycled polyester. I take pride in that. If I'm not wearing something that's virgin plastic, then that's a bigger issue. The issue with us is that when we mechanised and when we started looking at our own convenience, we also started looking at how our purchasing power looked to us? Most of our purchasing power was depleted, if you look at our parents, their purchasing power was better than my grandparents. Honestly, my purchase power is better than my parents' purchase power. And similarly, it'll be the case for my kid. Now, when my parents were there, they used to go to a tailor to get their shirts made or a trouser. When we were growing up, we used to go to this tailor, but now for us, it's basically a Lee or a Levi’s. We don't go to these tailors, and that readymade garment has taken up the shape of the fashion industry. That's because of our purchase power parity. It's moving up and up, and because of that, you have dispensable income. And when you have dispensable income, you want to splurge, but you want to splurge fast. Your purchase power allows you to change your fashion every month. Because of that one-month cycle that you have, you want to buy something that is on the shelf for only a month, or two months, and you can change it specifically to women's wear, men's wear is still fine. You go in, you buy five shirts, you come back, and then you try and use those five shirts for two, three months, and then you go back to a showroom. In women's wear, they want to explore; they want to buy more, and every time they go back to their wardrobe, they want to buy more. That is women's wear, and that is why all the brands started catering to price points and value for money. There is Zudio, right? In India, that got introduced by Tata, or Reliance Trends introduced by Reliance. These are not catering to people who have possibly a dispensable income of one lakh Rupees every month. They're catering to people who have a disposable income of 25,000-30,000 rupees because they want to sell a t-shirt for 200 rupees. If it's an MRP of 200 or 300 rupees, basically, at least with the markup of a hundred percent, you're expecting the price to be around 125 rupees. To put 50 rupees. Half of the garment price is fabric. That's the general standardisation. So, if it's a 150 Rupees T-shirt that's on the cost price, you're expecting 75 rupees worth of fabric. Now cotton can't be completed. And hence the shift. So, people started moving towards these man-made fibres. But if you look at the international market, what has started happening is that India is yet to see the day of light here. But the European Union and the U.S. have started putting regulations on being able to ask their retailers that you need to tell what is your traceability of the supply chain, that is, A; are you sustainable in this supply chain? that is B, and C is what are the compliances that you are following and asking your vendors to follow? M&S got sued for that; Puma got sued for it. Multiple brands got into multimillion-dollar legal fights because they weren't able to trace their supply chain or weren't able to convincingly say that there is no child labour here and all compliances are being followed. And the consumer pattern in the U.S. and Europe has shifted. It has shifted towards asking these questions to the brands and hence the regulation. And because of that regulation, China plus one strategy emerged in the textile and apparel industry, where now all of a sudden, H&M, who was the biggest buyer in China, wants to come to India, wants to go to Brazil, wants to go to Egypt, Turkey; they are exploring their revenues. A Turkish fabric producer who's possibly working with almost all the brands of $1.5 billion turnover every year has never worked with India because India is sub-par, and they don't deliver quality; they don't deliver consistency. Today if they don't diversify the base to India, God knows what will happen. Will the brands continue to order through them? And hence the need for India to emerge. The problem as to why India didn’t emerge. We should possibly have emerged during Covid. There was such a rampant demand for textiles. People wanted to order. It's not that the fashion cycle will stop at any given point in time. The only change would be. Rather than me buying formal, I will move towards casual and activewear. That's the only change, but you won't stop wearing garments. You won't stop changing your curtain or your home furnishings. The change was, did the industry take over that demand? No. The industry couldn't take over that demand because there were no compliances in check. We didn't know our own supply chains. Now talk to Raymond. Raymond has an export unit, which basically works with different brands, providing them with jackets. They have a Yawatmal unit where they're manufacturing the fabrics. But other than that, can they trace? Can they go back and say, okay, this rule has come from this particular part of the world? I'm not saying India, the world; you’ve been procuring wool for a very long time. But the over-reliance on these traders, who are the middleman of the supply chain, doesn't allow you to penetrate the supply chain. And because of that information asymmetry, you are not able to pass on the information to your customers as well. The same story is if you go to any export unit, any kind of domestic unit, they do what they do best, which is apparel manufacturing and buying the fabric. Most of the time, the brands themselves define who will be the fabric vendor. You are buying the fabric from a nominated vendor, hence the traceability of the fabric. But the fabric guy is not giving you the traceability to yarn or the twisting or the blends that he's procuring or the dying that he's doing. Can he assure you that it's an azo-free dyeing and there are no carcinogenic substances in it, all that nobody's checked? Hence, we were not able to capture this huge latent demand that was existent. So, yeah, so India is yet to be able to, I think what we need is a platform which basically can tell that, listen, I can penetrate this entire supply chain. I will assure you there is compliance. And if there are no compliances, I'm going to take the blame. Because Arvind wants to seclude themselves from that, they don't want a P&L hit; they don't want a balance sheet hit. If you are ready to take that risk, you can take over that demand very easily.
Pritish: You said that fashion trends keep changing, and you talked about movie stars. Now obviously, we have Sarthak, who's a social media influencer, right? So, these days are fashion trends changing because of influencers such as Sarthak, or is it still connected to what Shah Rukh Khan or Deepika Padukone is wearing? So how is the fashion trend changing? Who's influencing it the most?
Mayank: Fashion has three theories. One is the trickle-down theory, which is what we are talking about, a film star wearing it, a cricketer wearing it, an influencer wearing it, trickling it down. And then you're finding it in a department store, and then the clearance bits, that's your trickle down. The trickle-up is when street fashion becomes fashion. You go to Dharavi; somebody has cut his denim in a very particular way, and a designer looks at it and makes it fashionable. That's another way how fashion gets translated. The third and most important part is the trickle-across theory. I love the T-shirt that Sarthak is wearing, I want to buy it, I'll ask him, where have you bought it from? Simple theories. So, if you ask how fashion gets translated in today's world, it gets translated into all these three things. Yes. If Sarthak is wearing nice clothes, the many influencers who have become fashion influencers, though that's not their fashion content, that's not their main content, but they've become fashion influencers by virtue of the content that they're doing, and brands want to get associated with them. So, hence fashion gets trickled down that way as well. The other aspect is fashion also goes upwards. Primarily if you go to any street, you'll find these young millennials, they can't possibly afford a brand, but they will go to Sarojini Nagar, and then they'll cut that t-shirt, they'll do something with it. That can influence fashion also, and that can influence fashion brands as well. So, then, of course, the simplest way of trickling down fashion or trickling across fashion is, I like a pink shoe, you like a pink shoe? Both of us bought pink shoes. Pink has had many connotations in India, but today it's become normal for us to wear it. Like I have my Head of Strategy, who spends close to one and a half lakhs every month on shoes. I have never seen a man spending that much money on shoes, but he loves it. He will go to Air Jordans and buy Air Jordans on a whim. I've seen men today exploring watches. I don't think our father used to do it like they will have this HMT or a Titan watch they would've bought during their wedding, and that gold watch will continue for life. We now have a watch case, and we are exploring it. So, that exploration has started, and hence the fashion industry changes every time, and there are micro trends that come in and go. There are major data trends that come, continue, and then there are contemporary classics that they're continuing for a very long time. The Chanel black dress continues. Today also, there are girls who will die wearing it. A Nehru jacket, a contemporary classic from the oldest age that you can think of, the great-grandfather would've worn it. You also love to wear it. These contemporary classics continue, and then there are these micro trends that happen. They come in a blip of the radar, and then just all of a sudden, you won't find it like the Salman Khan hairstyle in ‘Tere Naam’ (a Bollywood Movie) came and went. Today you won't find somebody doing that kind of hair. But at that point in time, even John Abraham was with straight and long hair. So, these are different fashions that you will continue to see evolving and the basis that the brand continues to evolve. The problem and the challenge in India are that none of the brands take precedence in being able to decide what will be the fashion forecast for India. Most of us follow a fashion forecast conducive for Europe or U.S. Promostyl and Vogue are what our fashion designers and we read. We go to London Fashion Week and New York Fashion Week to read what they are making, and then it comes percolating down to India. All of a sudden, sequins have become a big thing in Indian fashion in the last fashion show. If you've seen the last couple of fashion shows, you'll realise that structured polyester and bling all over the place have become this fashion thing. But if you look at the background, you'll realise that the international shows were already showing it a year or six months back, and hence it's just percolating down in fashion for us. But nobody knows what Indian fashion should be because your skin type and body type are very different from my skin type and my body type. I hail from the hills. I was born and brought up in MP, but I'm basically from Almora. You are from different parts of this country, and this country has such a big diversification. We have a Mongolian-looking tribe in the Northeast and Pathani Jats in the West. How will you make fashion for both of them the same? It's not possible. You need to understand these microclimates to be able to give them fashion, but none of our brands do that. We don't have our influencer in the brand itself. They're not influencing fashion. They're just following trends.
Sarthak: So, so many questions keep coming to my mind. And, of course, we wanted you to take us through the entire value chain Reshamandi solves. At first, we thought it was a logistics and supply chain management company. And then we realised that it's equally much a data company where it's capturing a lot of data, possibly helping farmers and people across the value chain with the Internet of Things, IoT devices. We'd love to know what you measure and how these people use it. And then we saw that there is ReshaWeave, so you are also competing with Fab India. And now I see that you're talking about picking up trends and defining that for India when I think that the only company I know of which possibly does a trend analysis is Pantone, which will come up with the summer collection colour everyone should follow. Can you walk us through really what all are things in the entire value chain that you solve and also map it with where you see the real profit pool? Because now, a lot of it could be ancillaries getting added because if there is a profit opportunity, let's not let go of it. But what do you think would be the absolute core business from an impact perspective and then, more importantly, also from a profit perspective?
Mayank: Let's understand the fashion textile industry chain as such. Right? So, it starts with the consumer. I'm going back into the supply chain. Start from the consumer. That's where you're buying your shirts and your Sarees. You're buying it from a retail counter or a brand counter. That brand has a buying team or a sourcing team behind them if it's a corporate brand. But if it's an SME retailer, he's chosen. The mindset is of “Lalajis” (traditional moneylenders/business class). Basically, that guy tries to assimilate his thoughts. He’s not looking at data, but he's assimilating his thought that this would look good for my consumer, and hence his calculation of sales. That order is placed with a trader, generally, if it's an SME retailer and a corporate brand, they're placing the order with the corporate apparel house. This apparel house or a home furnishing house is manufactured on behalf of this SME retailer or a corporate brand. Then the fabric manufacturing in the back, the ancillary industry, there would be a dying, merchandising, mercerisation, your finishing industry, and all that, the trim industry also coming in like your buttons and zippers. Behind the scene of fabric manufacturing is yarn manufacturing. In cotton, it'll be spinning units. In silk, it'll be reeling units, the processing for different yarns. But again, there is a diversification there where you are blending the yarns together. A cotton fuses with viscose and becomes a cotton viscose or a polyester, viscose or silk cotton, or things like that. So, there is a fusion of yarns that you can also do. Then behind the scenes of a yarn manufacturer are the farmers or an industry like viscose, which is more of an industrial type. Taking an input, if it's a three-segment that we spoke about, man-made regenerated and the natural fibre, man-made has the input connection to the petrochemical industry, which is your polyester and nylons. Then you have viscose, rayon, and otherwise, that is experimentation. Primarily it is lab-made or mill made, but the basic input that is provided to that is the pulp. It's almost like paper. The paper industry has pulp as the input and, finally, the paper. Similarly, the viscose rayon industry has pulp in the background as the input. The farmer, however, has different inputs for different crops. If it's a cotton farmer will have a cotton seed input and different fertilisers, pesticides, and otherwise. Similarly, if it's a silk farmer, he is looking at silkworms as an input. Behind the silk farmer, the silkworm is coming from a ‘chaky-rearing’ centre. That guy, think of him as a poultry, a guy who is basically hatching the egg, making a chicken. That chick goes to the farm, becomes a hen, and finally goes to a slaughterhouse. Similar story in Silk’s case where you have an egg-producing unit, a chaky, which is basically hatching the egg and making a larva. Larva goes to a farmer, a 21-day cycle, makes the cocoon, and sells it off in the industry. And then, the yarn manufacturing, silk sarees finally come to the retail counter and are consumed. So that's the entire premise. Reshamandi, where do we work, and how do we provide value to it? Our value proposition is sourcing the right quality, the right point in time, and at the right price so that there is transparency. If you are buying it at the right price and right quality, and you're buying it at the right point in time, then your efficiency goes up. When your efficiency goes up, your profitability goes up. The second service that we provide is demand. Can we give you perennial demand? Can we then also look at what is the catalogue that you are producing yourself and try to be more effective about it? Can we diversify your demand base specifically in different segments, like a yarn manufacturing segment to a textile segment, which has different problem statements? Sometimes it's a consistency of quality that they're not able to provide. If you go to Wardhaman, you may be able to get a better yarn, and hence a 10-20 rupees extra cost versus the same spending unit who's just beside Wardhaman might not be able to give the same consistency in quality. So, if they have perennial demand, they can maintain quality, and they can continue to run without having to think about how my overheads are looking. The third part is merchandising. Can I give you a categorisation of what SKUs to produce which are selling in the market? Where is this demand coming from? If I can tell you that if you can run your machine by reducing your efficiency by 5-10%, don't run it at the full speeds, but you'll effectively be able to get a yarn or a textile, which is better in quality and hence 10 rupees more in terms of your profitability. It's better to do that instead of just continuing to run your factory. Then the fourth part is how do I automate all these processes for you? Like in the farm sector, we've automated through our IoT devices and advisory where we tell the farmer, don't irrigate today. A simple analogy here is that you, me, Sarthak, and all of us water our plants every day. The plant behind Sarthak would love to water it primarily because that's a very Indian mindset. We have been told to do it without any scientific reason. But plants have a need for water. It doesn't require water. Like in the silk’s case, the mulberry is a semi-arid crop. It can effectively grow in the Thar desert as well. It can survive. Shehtoot truth you can find everywhere in India when you were growing up. The Rig Veda also talks about mulberry. Every household should have one. So, if it is that very sturdy crop, why are you watering it? And then, when we put our IoT device, we realised that the farmers can save water by following our advisory and increasing the productivity per acre for the mulberry leaves themselves. There are two ways you can grow your profitability. Either you sell the extra production that you have of mulberry leaf to somebody who's not able to have that production. Second, increase the rearing shed size where you are feeding the silkworms. There are only two ways to go about it. Now rearing shed’s IoT device is primarily doing the same story. The rearing shed is nothing but this room. Think of it like this room with six windows on either side that can open. That's it. That's what a rearing shed looks like. Silkworms on different beds and mulberry leaves being fed to them. You are handling living organisms here. If you can increase the rearing shed that is just by putting more concrete on top, you can effectively increase your productivity as well. So rather than increasing 40% in my mulberry production, I can also increase 40% in my input production on the silkworm side. Hence, the overall percentage of profit that you are going to have per acre. The last aspect is how do I help you with financing and insurance options. So financing, we realised it's working capital intensive, right? This is during our series itself. We realised it's a very heavy working capital-intensive pay. There is a challenge at SME retailers’ side where they are not able to know when the customer footfall is going to come conducively. And hence they can't define what will be their working capital. And nobody, none of the NBFCs and banks, wants to work with them. Primarily, they also can't understand their working capital. Same story with textile mills and apparel houses. If you read articles, you'll realise that the mills in India are facing troubles. Ginning units in India are facing troubles. Spinning units in India are facing troubles. Retailers don't have consumption. The entire supply chain takes effect because the consumers stopped. The taxpayers don't have us purchase power right now, and the entire supply chain takes the toll on it. The other aspect is if you look at the corporate brands also, you will realise in their quarterly filings that their DPO days are closer to 200 days, which means they are also delaying their payments to their suppliers. And hence the supply chain, again, will have working capital. So, we said if we are doing transactions, and we were giving credit to all of these guys, we understood that credit. Today also, ReshaMandi has a large exposure in the market base, is the turnover that we have done. So, we understand that credit is the game here. We can't change that. I can't say no; I can't give credit. I need to figure out how to seclude my balance sheet and how do I secure his balance sheet as well. That is the only thing that both of us can play. And if we need to do it, we need to have securitisation of financing and a securitisation through insurance. Can I put both of these together and then go to NBFCs, and Banks who've been working with ReshaMandi can back Reshamandi can think of us as an option? Then go into our supply chain and be able to give out financing options to them, and be able to give out insurance options to them. And when we started lending from our books, we started giving them, do I now pay later options, invoice discounting options. These were some small experiments that we have been doing for the last nine months. We grew to 35 crores, and then we started reducing our AUM from the market because now we know we need an NBFC licence. The other aspect is that we launched insurance programs in the market again to test what is, we launched something with AIC, the Agriculture Insurance Company of India that says India's first sericulture program on insurance, primarily parametric base, where farmers did not have to go to any insurance company even to claim the insurance. Through the parameters, we've already marked the area and the acreage, and we know that the farmers can directly get the input cost cover. Similarly, we have something in collaboration with on surety for our stakeholders where they cover life and health for themselves. It's deep-discounted, but the other aspect is, as I said, somebody has to say to the world that we are compliant, and if I need to be compliant, how do I become compliant? As for that, I need to know who's the labour working in the factory. So, we then, in turn, went to all these factory owners and said, we'll do a markdown price for the insurance. Most of these guys work for you on a daily wage basis and hence shift their allegiance to somebody else because of 10 rupees. Here is an insurance program that you can give them over 20-25 rupees a month, and it'll cover their health. It'll cover their life, and you can renew it every month, which means it's a flexibility that you have. So, if you've taken a cover of a hundred people, there is a new person coming in, and this older guy going out, you can always block the older guy, add the new guy, and then increase your retention rate. Your retention rate goes up; I get the KYC. We are all done. These are the five different things as to how we look at the supply chain and how we work with any of them. So be it the retailer where we give out a forecast as to what he should buy. Somebody sitting in Panvel in Mumbai Vs. Bandra, where there's a lot of fashion influence. Both of them will have different choices. Even the retailers on our app will have different choices. So, when we are giving fashion forecasts to these two different guys, there are two different fashion forecasts approximating; colours choices will be different. And then we'll say, here is an automated buy plan. You don't have to create one. We become your buyers. We are telling you, buy this. It's easier for any human to say no to things than saying yes to things. That's just the human tendency. So, if I'm giving you a prefilled form, you will say, hey, my name is wrong, and you will rub it, and you'll change. But if I give you a blank form, they will never write their name there. So that's how we work on human psychology as well. It's more of a user experience as to how you allow people to continue to engage. Once you have given the fashion forecast, once you have given an automated buy plan, you already have created a demand. That demand can percolate into your fashion supply chain. The supply chain continues to go back then, paddling into the demand and the supply for the others, and hence the perenniality of the demand and supply, and you being able to associate the supplier to the right set of buyers. Being able to associate the supplier with the right buyers and know exactly what your margin would be in that particular transaction every time becomes a flywheel.
Pritish: Why is the mulberry leaf or ‘shahtoot’ mentioned in the Vedic scriptures?
Mayank: Mulberry has medicinal properties, and it also purifies the air to a very large extent. And because of both these properties of Ayurveda, which Rig Veda defines, it is a plant that almost all Indian households should have. One, it keeps the air around you pure, and it allows for negative energies to go out, is what is said in the Veda. Mulberry is a very nice fruit. It's a fruit that has a very feeling to it, and it's very juicy. There are less insecticides and pesticides in it. Because it's a sturdy crop, it doesn't require anything. Right. So, you won't have to worry about it too much. It's not like strawberry, where you have to worry about that. Mulberries are very sturdy, and plus, it doesn't consume much water from your water table. So, because of that, it allows for your water table to continue to remain, soil degradation, reduction, and things like that. Yeah.
Pritish: You said 50% of the cost is the material. I want to understand how much the brand name is.
Mayank: Different brands have different ways of looking at it. If you are a fashion brand, like my first employer, you’re increasing it from the cost price, approximately 4x to 5x, after you include the overheads. So, all your material cost, all your stitching cost, everything put together, that's your cost price. Then the overheads of the company, and then you have an effective cost price. You increase that by 4x to 5x, and that becomes the brand price. The brand is pricing it such, specifically the high designer, where they're worried it may end up in a trunk. Somebody might not buy it because they are manufacturing for a very elite customer, elite customer choices differ very fast. They change very fast. If somebody has gone to Paris and seen something, they may not like anything from an Indian designer there. So, it's very difficult as an industry for them. And hence survival is primarily by escalating prices. The other aspect is that there is a theory around it, and I believe you both would know better than me on the economic side of things. But it is said if you are in a luxury segment, the more you increase the cost, the more exclusive it becomes and the more consumer demand. Hence the Sabyasachi lehenga, right? So, the difference is that it’s so exclusive that you might not be able to purchase it and hence you will fall in line for it. For a consumer, they don't care as to how much they are paying for it. They care about exclusivity, and the customer segment is such. But if you go to a departmental store or a large value retailer, or somebody like a Walmart or a Target, they're concerned about every cent, every dime that's there, and they're concerned primarily because they need to sell you a shirt at $2.99, a white plain cotton shirt. That's hard. Even for the factories that are working from that supply chain, it's hard for them because meeting that price point every time, every month, doing shipments back-to-back requires the cotton prices to be stable. If the cotton prices are not stable, I'm going to look for hoarding at the time when the prices are down. Now, if you are going for Levi’s, I don't have any NDA with them so that I can disclose them. I did my graduation project, and I'm talking about 2007. I was with Raymond's Export Unit. Levi’s clothes were getting manufactured for 250 rupees. This is Levi’s 511, something that both of us wear, how much are we paying for that? Like even in 2007, I think we were paying around 4,500 rupees for those jeans. I was shocked when I looked at the merchandising costing sheet. I was like, wow, this is a fabulous margin. If you look at the overall price, this was the cost price at the factory level, but if you add the shipping cost and the logistics and the import and the export duties and otherwise, and the distribution that Levi’s has to do beyond it, possibly another addition of 250 to 300 rupees there. But yes, that's the margin that the brand has. Now for denim, they have a CAC of around 2000 rupees, assuming Levi’s has a CAC, then yes, pricing it at 5,000 rupees, I'll understand it because you're anyways spending 1000 rupees and shipment procuring the goods, 2000 rupees being able to get the customer indoor and then you have 2000 rupee profit, absolutely fine. But there are brands which don’t have any CAC involved. The brand has already evolved so much that you will pay whatever it comes, like an Apple iPhone. The brand doesn't have to come out with a story or an ad that entices you. They talk about features in their ad. There's no brand endorsement. They're basically saying my camera is better than the other camera or something of that sort like they don't have a bandman or somebody up there paying them crores of rupees to endorse their plan. Different brands have different kinds of cost price structures within them, but the supply chain behind, you'll realise, has a fixed margin component. The margin that if you go from the retailer all the way to the farmer, 20-30% of the margin profile is with dealers, distributors, and traders. They add value. The value addition that a trader or a distributor is doing is primarily about financing this industry. They are the guys financing it. They are the ‘marwaris’ and ‘baniyas’ (traditional moneylenders). They are the ‘arthiyas’ of this industry and nothing bad. If you know the game, play it, why not? The whole challenge is that they create information asymmetry. What is information asymmetry? You go to a yarn manufacturer and say, listen, India produces the lowest grade of yarn. Hence, the highest of the yarn versus the lowest grade. You are looking at 2,500 rupees in terms of the per kg rate itself. Now, if I am, as a trader, saying that India is producing the cheapest quality, I'm going to pay you 2,500 rupees less. I'm not going to allow you to get the testing done. I will, in turn, do the testing on my end. Then when I go to the dealer or distributor, I will tell him to choose what they want. Smoothness or thickness. I will only assure you one thing. I'm not going to assure you two things, the dealer has to choose because they’re hoarding, right? They can check with 10 of my friends. But those 10 friends, we can cartelise against you. We can cartelise against the entire industry if we need, and hence the viewer has to pay whatever cost it is. So, by the time this guy has got, let's suppose, 500 rupees, by the time it translates into a yarn going to a weaver, there will be ideation of around a hundred to 200 rupees. Weaver is paying more, the yarn manufacturer is getting less, and the guy in the middle, who's financing the game because he could hoard, is making the margin. Both of them have the same margin profile. That margin profile is not changed. Again, the same thing happens if you go toward the farmer. They go to a Baramati Mandi or a Ramnagar Mandi. Nobody cares about our farmers. Nobody cares. Mandis don't care about the yarn manufacturers either. For them, it's a platform to come, go, and do whatever. I don't care. There is an auction. At the time of the auction, you get 200 rupees, 400 rupees; you accept the price. I have no bearing on it. It's almost like Flipkart saying; I have no bearing on what my supplier is producing or giving. There is an indemnity there. Same thing. The government markets have indemnities saying, boss, I have no bearing in this trade. I'm going to make my two 2% margin, 1% from this guy, 1% from this guy. I'm done. I'm giving you a platform. Choose what you like. But the problem with that platform is when the farmer is having 700 km to go to this particular place, he is sleeping under the benches in inhuman conditions. The next day when he's selling, he's so frustrated that he has to sell it, and when he has sold it, people are giving him cash, wads of cash. It's unsecured. That cash in his pocket will be gone by the time he comes home. Half of it or 25% of it'll be gone with friends. That's human psychology. You have cash in your pocket; you can't keep it. None of us can keep our excitement within ourselves. That's the problem. How many of us have this economic sanity of saying, okay, I have one lakh rupees in my account, and I won't splurge it. We don't have that economic sanity.
Sarthak: You will reach self-fulfilment if you can do this.
Mayank: Agrarian society who's basically looking at that money once a month or once in three months, do you think he has the patience to wait for that money to splurge? He will splurge, and that's exactly what happens in the industry. While on the other hand, the yarn manufacturer who is walking into these markets, is basically looking at different materials. Sometimes he gets outbid by one rupee, or two rupees by some other competitor, and some days are such that if you have a capacity of taking 400 kgs of input on a per-day basis, you are not able to pick up 200 kgs also. Hence, you are overhead cost for that day. How do you continue to maintain it? And hence, you're trying to squeeze from wherever you can. Also, these yarn manufacturers have a cycle. They sell their produce once in seven days but have to buy their input every day in cash. It's a very dangerous cycle that they're playing. The trader doesn't come into the facility once in seven days; they’re doomed. They go to Muthoot gold finance to subjugate gold from their wires, to conducively run their factories. It's a dangerous territory, and we all talk about financial inclusion, but that isn’t happening here. So yeah, that's the whole purpose of this supply chain, but they have different problems, statements at different levels.
Pritish: So why is Mayank the best place to build ReshaMandi? Other brilliant people have come out of NIFT and built successful careers. Why are Mayank and his co-founder the best places for building this?
Mayank: Why are Mayank and my co-founder the best place? I don't know if I'm in the best place. Possibly, we are the first place. See, I have gone through NIFT alums, right? I've seen our alumni. I love all of my seniors, but sorry to say this to all my seniors, guys have some balls. It's about the risk-taking ability to be in them. I risked my entire career, my entire savings, Saurabh came back from the U.S. with a nine-month-old daughter in his hand, he has an ailing mother and father. He left a well-paying job, sold all his Uber stock, and came to India. That's how we funded Reshamandi for the first six months through my savings and his Uber stocks. Have that courage. If you have the courage, you can solve a hundred things, but the problem is, where is the courage? Look at the NIFT alumni list and try to find people who have built businesses apart from Blackberry Founders, the guy who created that brand, there is no mass brand that we have been able to create. We have created designer labels, and we cater to every niche customer, and that is the mindset that even today persists in NIFTs. You go to NIFT colleges, you’ll realise they are basically training you to become a designer. The fashion designing course, textile design course, or all the design courses are training you to become a high-end luxury designer. They're not training you to become commercial designers. The apparel production guys, however, the technology that I came from, the specialisation I have, the course teaches you to basically think about mass production behind the scenes of the fashion industry. And I think if one or two more of us actually penetrate this industry with a thought that, okay, we can change the industry and the thought process of the industry, we can shake its rule; then I think some changes will happen. It's still far-fetched. Why is Saurabh an important asset at ReshaMandi or for this industry? How many of us at NIFT can claim to have a friend who has 14 patents in deep tech under his bed? It's about finding that synergy. Saurabh and I are school friends, but generally, when we go to our own specialisation that becomes our growth. We don’t connect primarily; we don't talk about each other's language. If I don't know how to talk to a deep tech guy, I won't be able to have a connection and forget about me being a co-founder with him. Thankfully for me, I have had a very flavourful career. I have been part of a retail, high-end brand, then an e-commerce company, and then hired my own company, and then finally, I pivoted towards user experience and product development. And had the flavour of industry of it. I can speak his language. So, if he is saying that I need a DST 110 sensor in an IoT device, I will understand it. If he is saying here is how the mobile app will get built, whether it will be a native or a hybrid, and here is what I can do, I will understand it because I've sold this in the market. The problem is that both these industries colliding has never happened before because none of these guys were talking to each other. I think the combination of a technology guy having a fashion friend and a fashion guy having a technology friend is why we are possibly the first. I don't know about the best.
Sarthak: Extremely interesting. When you mentioned that people from NIFT happen to make high-end labels catering to premium customers, I was thinking how it's not just in fashion, I think it is almost everywhere, especially in a market like India. When you're a smaller player, you cater to the cream of the market where you can make money quickly and then possibly trickle down. But I think for the lack of education in business or for the lack of capital for many people, the fact that they're always trying for almost decades to make money from the top layer, they're unable to go to the profit pools at the bottom where there is actual money to be made in the masses. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. My next question is, I was trying to draw analogies. I think almost everyone who is probably going to be listening to this podcast would think that the kind of like the Amazon of the textile industry, the kind of like the Zomato of natural fibres, and what we've seen with these kinds of platforms is that initially, they're enablers where they also create jobs for many people. First, you're solving for the existing players. Then you solve it so efficiently for the existing players that there are a lot more people coming to this ecosystem, identifying the profit opportunity and then making money, and then that's how you grow. And at some point, the business grows large enough that there is either the risk of becoming a monopoly or antagonising almost everyone you are putting on the platform because they feel the entire profit pool is going to this one marketplace, and there's nothing left for us. Do you think something similar would happen for ReshaMandi? I hope not in a negative way. But my question here is, are you creating more opportunities for people to come into natural fibres who are right now at the periphery, who are not coming into it because they look at our other farmers who are not making money, do you think more people are coming in? The risk of going much beyond is probably not higher because the market size is smaller. So, I'm confused. You may be able to articulate it better.
Mayank: So regenerated and natural fibre space globally is a $450 billion market. Is the market small? Of course not. Silk in India is a $10 billion market. We are still an import-deficit country. $30 billion is with China, which we can take over. So, imagine a $40 billion industry only on silk. That is the potential of India. I've done a bottoms-up thesis on silk because I started there, and I had to convince all my investors this. My bottom-up thesis is that there are 45 lakh farmers in India. Even if we are looking at per acreage yield and things like that, you continue to add the economics or how the conversion functions. You're looking at India's potential to grow to become a $75 billion silk industry. That's not even what the global market is today. That's India's potential. How much acreage do we have under Mulberry? The problem is that the farmers who have been practising this have not been knowing how to do it scientifically. The scientific community or the research community does its job, and they've been doing a very effective job. The shift of CB Gold to a double hybrid variety of silkworm in India is a great shift because it's a very conducive crop, and it yields better results, gives you a better yarn, and hence the better pricing for the farmer as well. This is what the scientific community of India has been able to do and achieve. The problem is how do we penetrate the science to the farm? For that to happen, you need a platform that can communicate in their own language and give them nuanced answers in their own language. It has to be that language. You have to talk that language with all these stakeholders. My call centre is getting a call from Dadar and Bhuleshwar, and he is saying, “safed me 60 chahiye” (I need 60 cambric in white cloth), this guy will understand it is 60 cambric that he's been talking about. We are not talking about anything else. That is the efficiency that is needed in the platform, right? How has Zomato become a platform? Because it understands your needs, what you like to eat, and your eating patterns, and hence offers you something on a Friday evening that you prefer. Similarly, if my platform can continue to learn, as to what the demand looks like in this industry and continues to emerge automatically, solving it, will it become a monopoly? I'm not sure, can you become monopolistic? Reliance is the king of polyester, but could it have become a monopoly? I don't think so. It's a very large market for many players to come in and go sometimes. So, I think it's an evolution that is yet to happen. The industry is yet to see what changes we are bringing, and we are a three-year-old company. I don't think Rome was built in a day. None of the companies were built in three years. If you want a long-lasting legacy, it will have to continue. It will have to continue for at least the next 10-15 years doing the same thing over and over again, making sure that there is enough education given out in the industry, enough education has come back from the industry to us, and we are able to rest on that feedback. That is when ReshaMandi can become a large enough name in the industry. The simplest vision is yes, we want to clothe humankind in natural fibres. That's the simple vision statement, but for that to happen, it'll take time. It'll take ages before we do it. I would love Meryl Streep wearing an Indian silk saree and walking the red carpet at the Oscars. I would love it. But that day hasn't arrived yet.
Pritish: Given that you do assume that the silk industry within India could be a $75 billion industry, you have evolved from silk to other varieties of natural fibres. Why has that happened?
Mayank: The Indian SME retailers or the corporate brands don't only sell. How many times do you buy a silk shirt in menswear? You don't. That's the challenge. And how many times are the silk sarees really coming to the wardrobes of our wives and our sisters and our mothers? Once or twice a year? If ReshaMandi wouldn't have been there, my wife wouldn't have had 200 silk sarees, to be very honest. The diversification happened because of the demand because you are trying to continue to work with these wallet shares of the retailers. You are trying to see, okay, what is the diversification that they want or they expect from me because if I'm playing on silk, I can only offer them silk cut and saree, which are more exclusive. My market size will continue to remain that much. I want to increase my market size. Let me start experimenting. Rather than going bottom up on any of our next supply chains, we went top down. Silk, we built bottoms up. We knew the flywheels as to how it could get created. We knew what the mechanics of creating this entire supply chain was. So, coming top-down helped us because now we had the demand. We were the buyers in the supply chain. When you become the buyer in the supply chain, the next guy works with you automatically. That is how we also started in silk. I became the buyer for the farmer. I didn't go and sell him silkworms at the start. Nothing would've worked. Because I was the buyer and I was assuring him of quality-based pricing, that is why the silk farmer worked with me. Similarly, because I'm the buyer in the supply chain, the second guy starts working with me. So, we started generating and looking at what are the different avenues that we need to get possibly. Cotton was, of course, where we knew we wanted to penetrate the entire supply chain. But in the linens’ case, we didn't penetrate the entire supply chain. We didn't go to the farmers. We started working with the yarn manufacturers. We developed our own fabrics, and then we went out. Because the farmers are in Europe, they're not in India; I can't work with them. Flax does not happen in. Different categories have different nuances. If I'm going and buying in cotton, if you're looking at Indian cotton and you're basically thinking of cambric, you think finer fabrics coming up, you're looking at those Uzbekistan cotton, which is yellow in colour, can only dye in Indigos, and hence Denims. Egypt, and you're thinking bedsheets. There is a reason because there is a finesse attached to it, there is a quality attached to where it is getting produced. Even in India, there are different varieties that are available. Different industry stakeholders have different requirements. Sometimes they will say, okay, I need Maharashtrian silk, I only need this type of cotton, it has to come from this particular acreage. Why is that? Because I have an end user in mind. The supply chain is a complicated maths and complicated science. We don't understand textile as an industry very well as an end consumer, we have to tone it down for the end consumer every time, and that is what ReshaMandi has been trying to do. When we are talking in our blogs, we are trying to make it very human-like. We are trying to speak their own language so that people understand that when we are talking about hemp and fabric being produced out of hemp, we give it a different flavour. When we are comparing our numbers, you would've seen when we compare our numbers, we try and tell them that this is, this much yardage of yarn is just one aspect, but I can also say that, okay, this can cover eight times the earth, and it's much easier to relate to that visual. So, we define it for the end consumer and continue to work with it.
Sarthak: I'm very intrigued. All the things you've told us about cotton in Uzbekistan being used for denim and from being used for bedsheets. While I could make some connections, this is definitely a great refresher. Which also brings me to my last question, which is for other white spaces that you see in this textile or fabric market, had you not started ReshaMandi, what would've been another exciting white space for you to build in, which may be the NIFT alums can also win, as listeners of this podcast, could.
Mayank: I created a company after National Geographic when I came out of there that was primarily about helping the artisans and weaving community in India, creating demand for them. Now, it's a very wide space in handicrafts. We have handlooms, and we have handicrafts. Leave Handloom aside, there is a large industry of handicrafts in India, divided between metal craft, cane craft, and bamboo, you have rock, and you have seashells. You have embroidery techniques and printing techniques. So much variety there, but the problem is that no platform is built on top of the supply chain ever because each of these different crafts is in different pockets of India. Each of them has different material requirements coming from the industry. For you to be able to become a platform on top of this, you need to understand each one of these crafts differently and then be able to create demand for them differently. Or create supply lines for them differently. It was effectively the same thing as how Reshamandi was visualised, right? So, if you start by saying that you want to be a horizontal platform, you won't be able to solve anything. If you solve for one, it'll be easier. So, if you pick up Lucknavi Chikan-kaari as a problem statement and solve for that, then you can replicate it because close to Lucknow, there is a leather hub in Kanpur. You can solve that next, and then go to Agra and solve for the marble work of Agra there. Then go to Mathura and solve for the handicraft or the painting they do on marbles, solve for that next, and then come to Gajraula and Delhi finally, and then solve for the fine arts of Delhi. It's a chain as to how you pick up and how you continue to build around that space. Yes, that's a huge wide space.
Pritish: How do you break down the story of FabIndia?
Mayank: Fab India started by saying that we want to help society, and they did. They are the effective guys who created a brand and were able to impart so much ground intelligence to our weavers, being able to work with our handloom weavers. It is difficult. It's a difficult community to work with because it's deeply rooted in India. you have to penetrate very low in India. You're going beyond B and C-class towns of India. Going to a village, having to have work in a village, and I've gone to these, I'm not joking. It's tiresome for you to work with them, tell them what design, tell them how you want consistency and quality, and continue to evolve that over a period of time. And a beautiful brand gets created. Amazing job there. Great. All that happened. But now is the time when yes, I understand you want to show the world that there is a profit pool that you are looking at, and I understand that from a commercial standpoint. But we are losing the essence of why FabIndia started. I would love Fab India to be that beacon of hope for all of us. FabIndia and Srujan are classic examples of how India evolved in social welfare, and I think that story should get freedom, is what I would say. That's how I look at it.
Pritish: FabIndia is weaved into our livelihoods, and our everyday life now. I truly hope, having heard your story, that ReshaMandi also is one day able to achieve that. Honestly, I never think about where the clothes I'm wearing come from. It's very hard work. And somebody is toiling in the sun to get us where we stand today. Brilliant. Mayank, that's a great place to close the conversation. Thanks for being on the show.
Mayank: Thank you, guys.
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