Nidhi Agarwal Knew Indian Women Lacked Good Western Wear. Here’s What She Did About It.

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.

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.

Finding out what fits

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.

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“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.

Marketing isn’t just about the money

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!

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