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How Kaaryah, a lifestyle solution raised funds from Ratan Tata after 113 rejections in a year?

About Kaaryah

Kaaryah is an Indian brand of western wear for women. Its USP is the size of the clothes that is available with 18 size options. Founded in 2013, the founder Nidhi Agarwal never looked back since the inception of the company. She being an experienced professional with more than 15 years of experience knew the market demand and filled the gap through the launch of her startup fashion e-commerce Kaaryah.

Why we chose Kaaryah as Startup of the Week?

  • Kaaryah has 18 different sizes of clothing for Indian woman’s body in comparison with the average of six.
  • The brand introduces 150 new designs every month.
  • Currently, Kaaryah serves more than 3,500 orders a month.
  • Kaaryah uses “What’s My Size” algorithm to get the exact fitting of a women with 85% accuracy.
  • Kaaryah offers clothes fitting according to three ways – Kaaryah’s ‘what’s my size’ tool, live chat with Kaaryah executive, or selecting the product and going through the size chart.
  • Kaaryah sells across various marketplaces like Myntra, Jabong, Flipkart, Paytm, Snapdeal, and LimeRoad apart from Kaaryah.com.
  • It has got huge visibility on social media with around 50,000 Facebook fans.

The Idea

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The whole story started from Delhi airport when Nidhi in 2010 was waiting to fly to Bangalore for an important meeting. Feeling bored while sitting, she rushed to a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino. The coffee store was rushed heavily and somehow the coffee spilled over her. So she headed towards a mall just outside the airport and replaced her shirt with a simple white shirt. She tried 3 shirts all from the popular brands but none fits her. She took this issue seriously and thought that many other women must be facing the same problem with their apparels. Using her professional experience in his personal study, she made a survey on 250 women and surprisingly, 80% from it had the same issue with them. Thus Nidhi after doing a lot of market research launched Kaaryah in September 2013.

Funding Raised

Nidhi Agarwal dedicated her time towards her venture. She was a single sister for 8 cousins. All of them keep Nidhi motivating. To grow the venture and expand its services, Nidhi meet many investors but none showed interest in her business idea.

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Some miracle happened at once. Nidhi’s father was also motivating her daughter all the time. Getting rejected by 113 investors within a year, Nidhi didn’t lose her hope. One day her father told, “Why don’t you try to contact Ratan Tata for fund raising”. This question stunned Nidhi and she said, “Why Ratan Tata will be interested in my small venture”. Somehow her dad managed to make her understand that there is no harm in sending a mail to Ratan Tata for fund raising. So Nidhi did the same.

Nidhi was not thinking of getting any response from Ratan Tata but one day she was shocked! She received a mail from the office of Tata saying they were interested in the idea of fund raising. So in this way, Kaaryah was able to raise fund from the Indian super giant Ratan Tata after getting rejected 113 times in a year.

Marketing

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According to Nidhi, for any startup to flourish, the vision is very crucial. She tells that any company must have its vision clear. Investing right amount of money at right time is the key of success for any startup.

“Customer behavior and preferences are the driving force for any business. As the market changes there will be many more strategies 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.

DSIM Team
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