[100 Emerging Women Leaders] Inside A Little Extra, Diksha Singhi’s line of quirky jewellery

Recently, Instagram suspended the account of A Little Extra, a quirky jewellery brand, for 15 days—a huge setback for the young and popular brand whose customer reach was largely through the social media platform.

The account was only restored a day before HerStory spoke to founder Diksha Singhi, who considers it one of the biggest challenges of the brand as it gets most of its traction and orders through Instagram. Fearing the worst, she created a backup account.

But there was one silver lining though.

“In just 2-3 days after our account was restored, our followers had increased by 10,000,” she says, attributing this spurt to its impact on the community it has built over the years.

“People came and searched for us and didn’t find our page. The support has been heart-warming,” she says.

From a content creator and an influencer to a successful entrepreneur—Singhi has traversed the creative path with success. Her interest in story-telling and marketing prompted her to move out of her hometown in Guwahati to Delhi in 2013 to study journalism and mass communication.

In her final year, she decided to start a digital marketing agency as she felt it would be the easiest and simplest way to “cash in on social media and communication trends.”

After running it for four years, she realised that she didn’t want to pursue it forever.

Through all this time, Singhi’s love for jewellery, especially handmade and quirky, remained with her, and it was only a short time before she turned her passion into a business.

Starting A Little Extra

Long before social media became a buzzword, Singhi was popular for her content on body positivity and bullying, which stemmed from her own experiences of being bullied during her growing years.

“I was always a fat child. Body shaming came in various forms via friends, family, teachers, and people, who did it intentionally or unintentionally, without realising how I felt. It brought in a lot of self-doubt,” she says

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The entrepreneur also “pretended” to be a tomboy for a large part of her childhood as she felt it was better than being called a fat girl. This, in fact, helped her and she started wearing what she liked, and eventually, she accepted her body for what it was.

Creating content, being accepted, and understanding and consuming the content of other creators helped Singhi put things into perspective and increased her confidence.

“It was very rare that I could find clothes in my size that I liked. And I bought clothes because they were available in my size. But one thing that didn’t have a size tag on it was accessories, and I would experiment with chunky jewellery, buying a lot whenever I travelled,” she says.

When this idea took root in her mind during the pandemic, Singh spoke to a few out-of-work karigars interested in customising her designs. In 2020, she started with small batches of terracotta jewellery and moved on to fabric, hand-painted, and beaded jewellery.

“On the first day, I featured my designs on Instagram, I made a profit. It also helped that I had around 20,000 followers on my personal page before I started my business. This translated into customers and the first 2,000 followers for A Little Extra. Also, the medium of content through reels and videos was gaining momentum,” she explains.

A Little Extra sold the first few pieces for Rs 150-Rs 350—way cheaper than brands selling beaded jewellery between Rs 2,500-3,000.

“I wanted to target people who want to experiment with jewellery and buy more pieces. India is a mass market, and our model works,” she says.

Handcrafted jewellery for all

In the four years since its launch, A Little Extra boasts over 1,000 SKUs on its website, including handcrafted jewellery made with brass, terracotta, fabric, beads, and more.

“If you want jewellery to match a pink, blue, or yellow outfit, you will get them from us. We also want to celebrate different occasions. For example, for Mother’s Day, we had an entirely new line of jewellery dedicated to mums. If you are going on a vacation, there’s an earring shaped like a cocktail; for hills, there’s a snowflake earning; and for festive occasions, we have different designs,” she explains.

Wanting to cash in on every trend and cater to market needs, the brand has expanded from earrings to neck pieces, chokers, headbands, rings, cuffs, and other jewellery. Today, it has a reach of over 2.5 lakh followers on Instagram, where Singh, her mum, colleagues, friends, and family model the pieces.

This year, A Little Extra featured on Shark Tank India and secured an investment of Rs 60 lakh for a 7.5% stake from Anupam Mittal, CEO of Shaadi.com, and Vineeta Singh, Founder of SUGAR Cosmetics.

“In the 1.5 months after our appearance on Shark Tank (India), our sales grew by 3X, and we gained a lot of recognition. Customers looked at us as an authentic brand,” Singhi says.

From a bunch of interns when they first started, A Little Extra today has nine full-time employees and outsources work to karigars across India. Bootstrapped with an initial investment of Rs 5,000, the brand clocked an ARR of Rs 2 crore in the current fiscal. 

Singhi is looking at featuring A Little Extra in more flea markets and exhibitions and expanding its online presence to include ecommerce marketplaces. She also wants to add more categories, launch new jewellery lines every month, and explore new markets.

As a fairly new entrepreneur, Singhi has some practical advice for women who want to start up but are not motivated enough to do so.

“The only way anything can happen is by doing it—karne se hi hoga. If you keep thinking and have wonderful ideas in your head but are not acting upon them, you are not going anywhere. But if you have a small idea and are working towards executing it, you will learn. You may fall, but you will get up and get better along the way,” she says.