From an Ahmedabad chawl to making the PM's clothes—the Chauhan brothers' tale

What happens when the sole breadwinner of the family decides to leave everything behind and become a sage? This was what two brothers, Jitendra and Bipin Chauhan, had to contend with when their father made a life-altering decision. However, having risen above the struggles, today they manufacture clothes for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and own a company with a turnover of nearly Rs 250 crore.

Jitendra and Bipin are the owners of the famous menswear store JadeBlue. Founded in 1981, the company, which has nearly 1,200 employees, manufactures clothes for politicians such as Sonia Gandhi and Ahmed Patel, among other known names.

When their father took off on his spiritual quest, he owned a store called Chauhan Tailors near Sabarmati Ashram. Making a decent living at the time, it came as a shock when he decided to give everything up.

The brothers then moved to Ratanpole in Ahmedabad, where their maternal grandfather and uncle had a tailoring shop called Makwana Brothers. The shop was popular at the time and received orders for over 100 clothes on a daily basis. Jitendra and Bipin’s elder brother Dinesh began learning the work while they continued their schooling. After school, both of them would also join in.

Twenty-two-year-old Dinesh decided to open his own shop, Dinesh Tailors, in 1975, and Bipin and Jitendra helped him out. Jitendra would work 15-16 hours and manufacture 16 shirts daily. Once both the brothers finished their studies, they decided to continue their family business and started a shop, Supremo Clothing and Menswear, in Ahmedabad in 1981. They took a loan of Rs 1.5 lakh and bought a 250- sqft shop in the commercial complex in Old Ahmedabad.

Jitendra, a visionary, realised that the business would flourish if they had influential people on their client list. They would manufacture exclusive poly-fabric clothes for Modi, who was an RSS propagator at the time. Since big names were associated with their stores, more and more influential people started coming to their stores.

Soon, they started manufacturing ready-made clothes and opened a huge 2,800-sqft shop, JadeBlue, in Ahmedabad. The business flourished over the years, and today, they have over 51 retail stores all over India with an annual turnover of over Rs 250 crore.

Read this in Hindi

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