1. Price it right: Make your product’s price sustainable for salaries, rent and quality of product. Don’t make your price tag an after thought

2. Invest well: Invest time, money and energy in your people and processes

3. Put money in the piggy bank: Save money from the business for rainy days

4. Invest in talent: They will ensure that your business grows smoothly

5. Create your community: An emotional connect with your community will help your brand grow

_______

“Failure teaches you everything. People should document their failures. Because that’s when you learn and become a better version of yourself,” says Sujata Biswas, 36, the co-founder of Suta—a Rs 50 crore textile and apparel brand.

Mainly known for its range of mul cotton sarees and blouses, the two sisters—Sujata and Taniya Biswas—launched the brand in 2016 despite no prior experience in fashion.

With engineering and MBA degrees from top institutes in India, the sisters had been working successfully with corporates, but said they had felt restless in their roles.

“Is this going to be the rest of our lives?” they wondered while returning from work every evening. They decided to explore the idea of Suta in 2014 and two years later, they gave up their corporate jobs to build the brand from scratch.

Today, Suta—which means thread and is also the combination of the first two letters of their names—enjoys a huge customer base. For instance, the online fashion store Myntra recently tied up with Suta and the brand registered an additional profit of Rs 5 crore.

“You develop a lot of grit when you run a business. So many things go wrong all the time, but you need to get up, and show up again and again,” adds Sujata, sitting at Suta’s office in Kalina.

Suta may be a successful brand today, but it wasn’t the first entrepreneurial effort for the sisters. For instance, while studying at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in New Delhi, Sujata had co-founded a firm called ADDojic, which enabled companies to advertise in cyber cafes through an online marketing tool. Two students from neighbouring IIT were co-founders. “Over 300 cyber cafes had signed up with us. We were almost talking to investors to raise funds. It had gone that far. But I had to join work, as I had student loans to pay off, so I couldn’t continue,” she says.

_______

In the first two years, we invested in looking at the supply chain, operations, and keeping the product quality right. We wanted to ensure that even if different weavers were working on a product, it would look the same

Taniya Biswas, co-founder, Suta

_______

Another venture to sell silver jewellery fizzled out when her partner in the venture was unable to give the business enough time.

Taniya, on the other hand, had a more successful stint with the salon she started while she was studying at IIM Lucknow. The campus regulations allow students to start their own ventures within a given space, which are then sold to the highest bidding student from the subsequent batch. The campus had two cafes and a men’s salon but the women had to go into the city for their grooming needs. Sensing a business opportunity, Taniya tied up with two other students and set up a 550 sq ft compact salon and hired three skilled professionals to visit it every day.

The interiors were basic but the demand was high, and the salon made a profit soon enough. Eventually, the business was sold to the next batch, with the founders taking home a cool sum.

Taniya says the small stint was the most valuable lesson in people management she has learnt. “We were selling the services to our peers. So, we had to learn to be strict and say ‘no’ to working on credit. We also had paisa vasooli… sending someone to collect money every month,” she says, laughing.

Pricing your product

What money management taught them, says Sujata, was to create buckets for everything when starting a business. “When we priced our products, we kept the various bills in mind from day one. We accounted for the salaries of employees, rent, electricity, as well as our salaries, even if we were not taking them at that point.”

“This ensured that we were not selling at a loss and we were able to pay our weavers a fair fee. That worked for us. Your prices should not increase just because (for example) your rent goes up, or you move to a bigger office,” she adds.

While they have been credited for fair pricing their sarees—their first sarees hit the market at a reasonable price tag of Rs 1,250—they do admit that it’s come with careful calculations. Besides keeping overheads in mind, they looked at what the pricing in the market was.

In the business of fashion, the copying of designs is often an issue, but the sisters believe it is the quality of a product that can ensure a brand’s legacy. For instance, when an employee found a copy of her design in the market and ordered it, they found the saree was in polyester instead of Suta’s trademark, unstarched, mul. “The price was lower, but it was not possible to give the quality we were giving. In such cases we tell the customer to see our quality and then take a call,” says Taniya. “Even if you sell and the margin is low, how sustainable will it be in the long run?” points out Sujata.

Frugal to the win

In 2014, Sujata quit her job at a Mumbai steel firm to pursue a PhD in e-commerce (she never completed it). Over the weekend, she and Taniya, who was still working, would explore other businesses. Having learnt photography at IIM, Taniya’s skills let the sisters explore wedding photography and product shoots. With wedding photography, the career was short-lived because “waiting for people to make it to the wedding was painful” but the second was a pivotal point as their products were in demand. “We were making tops, dresses and skirts, which we’d get stitched by tailors as examples of the photography work we could do, and people wanted the outfits more than the photos,” says Sujata.

The first Suta sarees were bought from wholesalers, with several washes thrown in to remove the starch. “It was later that we directly connected with the weavers, who initially refused to make unstarched sarees,” says Taniya. The weavers told the sisters that the weaving defects would show up in the unstarched sarees, which no one would buy. They were afraid these two young women would eventually return the materials.

_______

When we priced our products, we kept the various bills in mind from day one. We accounted for the salaries of employees, rent, electricity, as well as our salaries, even if we were not taking them at that point. This ensured that we were not selling at a loss and we were able to pay our weavers a fair fee. That worked for us

Sujata Biswas, co-founder, Suta

_______

“They understood we were amateurs from our language. We had no experience in the textile industry,” says Sujata.

But the sisters took enough personal safeguards for their business. Having saved up and paid off their student loans, they made an equal investment in Suta.

While their product demand had always been high—sometimes it had been tough to deliver the products on time in the initial years, they say. They did not invest in marketing for the first two years. “We invested in looking at the supply chain, operations, and keeping the product quality right. We wanted to ensure that even if different weavers were working on a product, it would look the same,” says Taniya.

Costs were kept low by using as much inhouse labour as possible. Even if it meant sweeping and painting the shop on their own. “Our first office was a 225 sq ft space in a bylane in Kalina. It was there that the two of us and our first employee Jaya (who now heads the Kolkata office) would sit. The office was furnished with second-hand buys, with everything from a cupboard, table, trunk, and mirror, costing us a total of Rs 13,000 only. We have not discarded the items till date. We painted the furniture ourselves. That was where customers would come,” says Sujata.

“That was also where Karan Johar’s stylist had come, when she was looking for sarees for Kiara Advani’s character in Lust Stories,” she adds.

The Dharma Productions cheque remains a milestone for the Suta founders. “We have even gone to customer homes ourselves to deliver the products,” says Sujata. “When we’d go to LiL Flea at BKC we would take the stock in our car, not bothering to hire a tempo, because why spend when we can save a few hundred rupees.”

The brand and the community

Building the Suta community has been an organic move. It started with meetups to just meet their customers and do a photoshoot. “We did not think it would be a success. We thought it would just be the two of us and we’d take pictures in South Mumbai and come back,” says Taniya.

There would be Facebook Lives, and when customers wore their sarees, they would repost it with their stories. Thus, emerged the Suta Queens. “Do you know there are Suta parties now? People turn up wearing Suta sarees?” Sujata says, amazed by her brand’s reach.

It was also a conscious decision to become the face of the brand. “It was the best way to tell our stories and connect directly with customers. We’d meet the weavers and do Facebook Lives with them. When we did the Raw Ink Saree, we said why we chose that colour,” says Sujata.

Even now, when a thousand Suta sarees will be up on Myntra, Sujata is taking time out to model for it—despite the time cost—because she says ‘there’s value to it’. That’s the pro.

The con is that she is recognizable, which becomes a sticky situation occasionally.

“We walked into a saree brand showroom recently. Earlier, I could shop without care. But the sales executive recognized me,” says Sujata.

It was a no-win situation. If she walked away without buying, would they think she was there to copy their products. If she didn’t buy the saree, would that be a statement too? Taniya, who adds that entering the shop was her idea, says being recognized made it difficult to shop.

There are other issues too.

Sometimes they are asked to comment on political events, which Sujata and Taniya say is not easy to do. “Unlike a celebrity who might be speaking for themselves, we are carrying 16,000 weavers with us. We can’t sabotage the brand and their livelihood because we feel a certain way about an issue.”

Playing matchmakers

They recently launched the pre-loved Suta saree sale. A customer can list their old Suta saree—the price is decided on a metric that takes into account the age of the product, the number of times it has been worn, and any damage to the product. When someone buys the product, the saree goes to the new customer with a little note from its first user. Suta charges operational costs.

Sustainability is great, but how does it help the brand?

“It lets our customers know that Suta is not a one-off purchase but a brand they will keep returning to and build an association with. Ninety per cent of those buying the sarees are new Suta customers. This is expanding our customer base,” says Sujata.

Covid lessons

When Covid hit, the founders doubled down and worked harder after the initial weeks. Deadlines were given to everyone on the team to ensure nobody was giving way to panic.

“We grew three times,” says Taniya. With companies laying off skilled professionals, Sujata and Taniya hired them. They got them to fix website glitches and make new content for the site and social media.

“We had created a reserve for dry days. Just not for such a long phase. But we used that fund and survived for a longer time,” explains Taniya.

“Weavers who would not speak to us during pre-pandemic times, asked us for work. So, we got them onboard and created our stock,” says Sujata. “The new weavers may not have been making our design, but we’d get calls saying there was no food in their house for the next meal. So, we bought from them,” adds Taniya.

Everyone from the web team to the weavers were onboarded online, with Whatsapp being used to share images.

“The moment the market opened, no one else was prepared and we started selling. At one point, there were nearly 3,000 orders pending,” they say. 

Results:

They have new products coming up and they are in the market for investors for a company they have bootstrapped.

They recalled a meeting they had with the weavers. “We also opened accounts for the women in the family. In the villages the whole family is involved in the process. The husband weaves, but the wife may help with the dyeing; but the money always goes to the husband,” says Taniya, adding, “So, we asked the women to open bank accounts and we deposited small amounts of money for them. When we met them, about 16-17 women greeted us in tears.  They said the money had helped them get their children admitted to a better school or eat the food they liked, which they didn’t have access to earlier. It gave us goosebumps. It’s what we wanted. The children have joined their father’s businesses, teaching them how to use technology to promote their business.”