This woman entrepreneur’s fashion jewellery brand clocked Rs 1.2 Cr revenue during the pandemic

Shraddha Sharma Tripathi left her well-paying product manager role in a stem cell bank to become an entrepreneur with Binni’s Wardrobe, a fashion jewellery brand, in 2015. She has a BSc in Biotechnology from Korba, Chhattisgarh, and later went on to pursue a Master’s degree in Microbiology from Nagpur University.

The Mumbai-based first-generation entrepreneur found that while there were a lot of sellers in the fashion jewellery space selling on various online platforms, she didn’t see any options or choices where the customer could ask for any modifications in their order.

“The focus on building a brand identity was missing in sellers who were just selling on various trading portals. It simply felt like this space is there to be claimed and this lured me into starting my own venture, which focused on all these points,” Shraddha says.

Her research made her travel to remote towns in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh to meet traditional karigars to help her with crafting the jewellery. This helped her build a supply chain where she could work with low inventory but a high turnaround. She also invested into workforce, raw material, and designing. This took almost three years and Binni’s Wardrobe began operations in 2018.

Unique and exclusive designs

“The major focus of Binni’s wardrobe today is to offer unique and exclusive designs by providing flexibility to the buyer if they want to make suitable modifications to their jewelry like change in length of the necklace, color of the beads, altering the findings etc,” she says.

It offers exclusive unique handmade designs in ethnic, tribal, semi-ethnic, and contemporary fashion jewellery. Apart from the standard necklace sets and earrings, the accessories range offers a wide range from toe rings, bangles and bracelets, mang tikas, waist bands, nose pins, etc. Shraddha says every product has a hint of the region its karigar hails from or raw materials sourced.

While Shraddha is the primary founder of Binni’s Wardrobe, she was joined in by her husband SK who now oversees the front end, sales channels, and outreach. She focuses on designing the jewellery, supply chain, cost controls, and post-sales operations. Shraddha manages all this with a very small team of 5-6 members for the core operations. 

Binni’s Wardrobe is available in Myntra, Ajio, Mirraw, World Art Community, Jharonka, and a couple of other ecommerce sites. More than 50 craftsmen and their families are associated directly or indirectly with the brand. Binni’s Wardrobe also ship to clients in countries with NRI population like the US-Canada, Australia, the UK, and the UAE.

Planning a new product pipeline

Bootstrapped so far, Shraddha began the company with just Rs 20,000 and despite the pandemic clocked over Rs 1.2 crore in revenue last fiscal. The founder did not disclose details of operating expenses.

“During the pandemic, footfalls have dropped but we are not too worried. We are using the momentary slow down to strengthen our processes, plan our product pipeline, and expand our channels. Our short term plan is to build our product portfolio bigger and long term plan is to be the one and only fashion accessories brand of choice,” she says.

Shraddha says there are a lot of local players who have evolved from a traditional or family business background or sellers who want to cash in the opportunity by jumping into this space. However, she considers only Voylla brand as competition.

With an impressive growth of 160 percent since inception, and the size of the fashion jewellery market pegged at Rs 40,000 crore, Shraddha believes the demand for her products, designs, and customer experience are some of the factors that have contributed to growth.

She has some pragmatic words of advice for other women entrepreneurs.

“Innovation, creativity, and uniqueness will always pay off. Always follow your heart for the ideas you want to implement.”