ENTREPRENEURSHIP WOMAN BHAGYASHRI
DIXIT FOUNDER, STYLEBUDS
She
turned a hobby into successful biz
Bollywood
actors are known not to wear the same clothes twice. Actor Aamir Khan proved an
exception recently. He wore a tee shirt when shooting for one of the episodes
of his television serial Satyamev Jayate, and then he wore the same tee on his
son’s birthday a few weeks later.
Bhagyashri Dixit of Pune can take some pride in that. The tee was part of the apparel range SheepStop that’s made by Bhagyashri’s venture Stylebuds.
As a student of central Mumbai’s King George English Medium School, Bhagyashri had pursued art as a hobby and even won a prize in a poster competition for literacy awareness which the President of India had presented to her when she was in class 10. Art, however, took a back seat when she decided to do a bachelor of engineering in information technology and later joined Atos Origin as an ERP professional in 2003. Two years later, she enrolled for the management programme of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
Bhagyashri had had a ring side view of her father’s entrepreneurial initiatives as he — an engineer with a Mumbai-based manufacturing company — tried to use his free time to run a small business of his own. “I had watched him put together the resources, garner orders and deliver them, all within the little time his weekends would allow,” Bhagyashri recalls.
Some of her batchmates at the ISB were successful entrepreneurs, and their stories were inspirational. And the chord with art came alive once again at ISB thanks to the programme module on ‘business and arts’, where artists from different fields visited the campus. It also helped Bhagyashri understand the nuances of art as business.
She returned from Hyderabad to join another IT company and worked there for two years. But all the time she had an urge to do something of her own. She thought of starting a food chain, she thought of an online shopping portal. But eventually decided to do something that her husband Parag Dixit had dabbled in when he was studying at IIT Mumbai. Parag, who went on to do a PhD from the US, had run a small apparel business, but had given it up due to academic pressures. Thus was born Stylebuds to make tee shirts.
To keep the business lean, Bhagyashri decided to ‘crowdsource’ online the designs for the tee shirts. This helped her reach a wide base of artists and concepts. “Each time we float a requirement we receive close to 1,500 designs,” she says. SheepStop pays the designer a fee plus a share in the sale proceeds, which are recorded in a transparent manner thanks to the transaction software it has developed in-house.
Bhagyashri also decided she wanted to do tees using only organic material. That was a challenge. She had to convince manufacturers from the country’s cotton garments hub Tirupur (and some in Nashik) to supply her tees made using oraginc yarn, organic dyes and organic processing. At the other end, she identified partners who could do screen printing of the designs using organic inks. “Things began falling in place and we began in 2009 with sales of 12 pieces per month, our friends and relatives being among our first customers,” Bhagyashri says. Also important was the help from entrepreneur networks such as Open Coffee Club and an eatery called GrubShup, a happening place for those in creative pursuits in Pune.
Bhagyashri, however, knew that however noble the ‘organic’ appeal was, a customer would not pay extra for her products. SheepStop, therefore, began with online sales and participation in exhibitions, thereby doing away with any marketing spend. Engaging with young artists from a wide geography got it a lot of visibility. Today, the brand sells online as well as through boutique retail shops in major Indian cities and on corporate campuses.
The business, which began with Rs 10 lakh — Rs 3 lakh from Bhagyashri’s savings and the rest from friends and relatives — became operationally profitable in one year, and had revenues of Rs 60 lakh in 2012-13.
The company has been receiving feelers from private equity investors and venture capitalists. But Bhagyashri is not keen on engaging with them. “I don’t want the ethos of our business — organic — to be diluted in the chase for profitability,” she says.
Bhagyashri Dixit of Pune can take some pride in that. The tee was part of the apparel range SheepStop that’s made by Bhagyashri’s venture Stylebuds.
As a student of central Mumbai’s King George English Medium School, Bhagyashri had pursued art as a hobby and even won a prize in a poster competition for literacy awareness which the President of India had presented to her when she was in class 10. Art, however, took a back seat when she decided to do a bachelor of engineering in information technology and later joined Atos Origin as an ERP professional in 2003. Two years later, she enrolled for the management programme of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
Bhagyashri had had a ring side view of her father’s entrepreneurial initiatives as he — an engineer with a Mumbai-based manufacturing company — tried to use his free time to run a small business of his own. “I had watched him put together the resources, garner orders and deliver them, all within the little time his weekends would allow,” Bhagyashri recalls.
Some of her batchmates at the ISB were successful entrepreneurs, and their stories were inspirational. And the chord with art came alive once again at ISB thanks to the programme module on ‘business and arts’, where artists from different fields visited the campus. It also helped Bhagyashri understand the nuances of art as business.
She returned from Hyderabad to join another IT company and worked there for two years. But all the time she had an urge to do something of her own. She thought of starting a food chain, she thought of an online shopping portal. But eventually decided to do something that her husband Parag Dixit had dabbled in when he was studying at IIT Mumbai. Parag, who went on to do a PhD from the US, had run a small apparel business, but had given it up due to academic pressures. Thus was born Stylebuds to make tee shirts.
To keep the business lean, Bhagyashri decided to ‘crowdsource’ online the designs for the tee shirts. This helped her reach a wide base of artists and concepts. “Each time we float a requirement we receive close to 1,500 designs,” she says. SheepStop pays the designer a fee plus a share in the sale proceeds, which are recorded in a transparent manner thanks to the transaction software it has developed in-house.
Bhagyashri also decided she wanted to do tees using only organic material. That was a challenge. She had to convince manufacturers from the country’s cotton garments hub Tirupur (and some in Nashik) to supply her tees made using oraginc yarn, organic dyes and organic processing. At the other end, she identified partners who could do screen printing of the designs using organic inks. “Things began falling in place and we began in 2009 with sales of 12 pieces per month, our friends and relatives being among our first customers,” Bhagyashri says. Also important was the help from entrepreneur networks such as Open Coffee Club and an eatery called GrubShup, a happening place for those in creative pursuits in Pune.
Bhagyashri, however, knew that however noble the ‘organic’ appeal was, a customer would not pay extra for her products. SheepStop, therefore, began with online sales and participation in exhibitions, thereby doing away with any marketing spend. Engaging with young artists from a wide geography got it a lot of visibility. Today, the brand sells online as well as through boutique retail shops in major Indian cities and on corporate campuses.
The business, which began with Rs 10 lakh — Rs 3 lakh from Bhagyashri’s savings and the rest from friends and relatives — became operationally profitable in one year, and had revenues of Rs 60 lakh in 2012-13.
The company has been receiving feelers from private equity investors and venture capitalists. But Bhagyashri is not keen on engaging with them. “I don’t want the ethos of our business — organic — to be diluted in the chase for profitability,” she says.
Dileep
Athavale TNN TOI130626
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