How online women’s wear brand AKS pivoted during the pandemic and now is all set to clock Rs 160 Cr revenue

In 2014, Nidhi Yadav launched the contemporary ethnic wear label for women - Aks, on Myntra, Jabong, Flipkart, and AKS’s website. Started with a seed capital of just with a seed capital of Rs 3.5 lakh in just five years, the company crossed Rs 100 crore in revenue, making it one of the biggest ecommerce successes.

After completing a one-year course in Fashion Buying and Merchandising at the Polimoda Fashion School in Florence, Nidhi was offered a job at Italian fashion brand Emilio Pucci. The Indore-based entrepreneur, however, chose to return to India and cash in on the ecommerce boom.

Starting from five to 20 styles every two weeks and later more than 150 new styles every month, AKS’s trend-based designs captured the market's attention like no other. Her husband Satpal would help out with the operations, and later become a co-founder.

Facing the struggles of the pandemic

A year after the brand’s spectacular performance, COVID-19 hit India, and ecommerce platforms only delivered essentials for almost 45 days. Like other entrepreneurs, Nidhi was taken aback by the sudden situation.

“We shut down operations on March 25 and reopened on May 3. A lot of factories we were engaged with depended on us for their daily wages. We didn’t want them to be laid off. So, we started manufacturing PPE kits and masks so that production was not hampered in any way,” she tells HerStory.

The brand was also among the first to offer coordinated masks along with the garments without advertising them on ecommerce portals. The move, she says, surprised many buyers who least expected it.

While the professional front posed many challenges, she says it was tough personally as well. Having little children at home, the fear of the unknown virus and the uncertainty that followed did not make life easy.

“The pandemic helped us to grow horizontally. During the second lockdown, when everything closed suddenly, our production was hampered drastically. We had a lot of waste fabric with us from the women’s garments we produced. We created a whole new kidswear range from that fabric and upcycled collection that became a huge hit,” she says.

AKS offers two different collections in the kidswear' range – a mother-daughter range and a siblings collection.

"My daughter always imitates me in my fashion, makeup, how I carry myself in public, what I eat, what I read, my interests etc. She is a true reflection of me. So is our mother-daughter collection about – if our children imitate us in everything, then why not clothing,” explains Nidhi.

The Siblings Collection was launched because Nidhi felt there was a gap in kids' wear regarding boys ethnic wear.

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Growing horizontally

AKS has also launched its maternity/nursing wear range – where all garments are multipurpose; they can be worn as maternity cum nursing wear. Actor Neha Dhupia has been roped in to promote a capsule collection in the maternity/nursing wear range.

“With this, our target audience has now broadened. Earlier, we used to cater to college girls and working women who wanted to look fashionable and in trend. Now we have mothers and kids too. We definitely have a vast customer base to cater to,” she says.

The period also saw many tech-enabled changes in AKS’ production processes, especially the introduction of CAD for pattern making using 3D for sampling.

“We have also made our factories tech-enabled; they also use CAD for production, which has reduced our production wastage. Also, because of the CAD software, we could identify wastage in women's garments, which made us think about starting our kids wear range. All our kids wear range is created, along with the women's wear range keeping in mind,” she adds.

Nidhi is also focusing on AKS Couture, as its premium label features garments that use a lot of georgettes, sequence fabrics, jacquards and silks with a unique capsule collection planned for Karwa Chauth.

She also reveals that the brand continues to maintain steady growth despite the pandemic.

“Earlier, we were selling only on Myntra. Now AKS Clothings is available on Ajio, Nykaa, Tata Cliq, and other ecommerce platforms. We have grown 25-30 percent during the pandemic, and are expected to clock Rs 160 crore revenues this fiscal,” Nidhi says.

In the immediate future, the brand’s focus will be on an omnichannel presence. Talks are on with 25 offline stories in north India, where the brand will be going live in another four months.

“We will go deeper with popular ecommerce portals in the country. This time, we will be focusing our B2C along with the franchise model as well. Apart from this, we are working on a special collection by associating with celebrities. Collections inspired by celebrities are also in the pipeline,” Nidhi adds.

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