From companies selling minimalist clothing to LPG solutions, the top SMB stories this week
Homegrown businesses are making the most of the Make in India opportunity, aiming to manufacture products for the world. This week, SMBStory covered the stories of Pune Gas and BeYours.
Last year, Make in India, the flagship programme of the Indian government that aims to ease investment, foster innovation, enhance skill development, and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure, completed eight years.
The initiative is based on four pillars identified to boost entrepreneurship in India: New processes, infrastructure, sectors, and mindset.
Homegrown businesses are making the most of the opportunity, aiming to create and manufacture products that are 'Made in India' for the world. This week, SMBStory spoke to the entrepreneurs behind Pune Gas and BeYours, who are betting big on India’s manufacturing industry.
Pune Gas
Jesal Sampat, the second-generation owner of Pune Gas, tells the story of how his father Jaisinh Sampat founded the business in 1986 to ease access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) solutions.
Initially, the company sold various products for LPG cooking for household use such as burners, regulators, and small pipes, among others.
In the late 1980s, as LPG became more accepted as a fuel for commercial and industrial purposes, the company started providing products and solutions for commercial LPG customers like restaurants and hotels. Products included pressure regulators, industrial gas hoses, gas leak detection systems, gas filters, and industrial burners.
By the 2000s, the company expanded into providing products, services, and solutions for industrial customers, serving companies like Britannia, Nestlé, MRF, Bajaj, Mahindra, Vedanta Group, Kirolskar, and Haldiram. Today, the company serves a wide range of customers across India and has even taken on projects outside the country.
BeYours
Started with the idea of providing comfortable clothing in the men’s segment, Beyours is helping customers gravitate towards minimalism with its product range.
Hailing from the small town of Bikaner, childhood friends Nilesh Karnani and Ashish Baheti had grown up around business and trade. Their families were involved in traditional businesses like textile dyeing, bangle manufacturing, and trading.
The duo always wanted to build something of their own that would be new and different.
While doing their bachelor’s degrees in commerce in Delhi and Bikaner, respectively, Nilesh and Ashish identified a number of problems with men’s everyday clothing. They observed that big brands claiming to provide comfortable clothing typically charged higher than what they generally offered in terms of fabric.
The duo also wanted to propagate the idea of minimalism through their product. Minimalism is a movement that advocates getting rid of unnecessary items and keeping only what is necessary. It entails having a limited number of outfits that are basic and versatile, and can be worn every day.
With these ideas in mind, they launched the direct-to-consumer men’s clothing brand Beyours in 2019. The Delhi-based homegrown minimalist fashion brand aims at providing comfortable clothing at the right pricing.
Other top picks of the week:
Digital Supply Chain Finance
Visualise this. A small supplier from a remote Indian town discounts an invoice for supplies made to a corporation, and within a day, money for the invoice is realised in their bank account—all of this flowing digitally without visiting a bank or dealing with documents.
This is not a futuristic portrayal of an ideal scenario but a reality today. Thousands of MSMEs in India are discounting their sales invoices at large scale using the TReDS platforms. This is why digital supply chain finance under TReDS is a force multiplier.
Edited by Teja Lele