today we have Sumit joria who quit his comfortable job to build a new age gen Z women fashion brand that is worth 200 cres there's a completely new consumer class evolving in India and it is a matter of time that India will tectonically shift from Millennium consumer to a genzi consumer numi has become the Talk of the Town amongst jenzi for their Immaculate fashion styles and trendy clothes and is the choice of thousands of women in India by the way numi is not just any fashion company it is a tech company and you will see how in this episode we dive deep into code insights into how Sumit built his Mega fashion tech company Sumit thank you so much for joining us today I want to start by getting to know you better in terms of how your childhood has been where do you come from I come from a city called jaur and born in a typical marar family uh so business is what is our DNA had our own set of set packs uh financially uh my father was bring own business but at least they made sure that you know they sent us to the best schools they sent us to whatever they could afford best at that time technology was always my passion so wanted to love technology I I love gadgets I love to carry the most advanced technology if I can my manager was is a great mentor uh gave me enough space to learn a big corporate house like Airtel a lot of time I always think that what I learned in air and consumer insights was phenomenal and it helped me to really really understand the pulse of India I was seeing a new India coming in India that time the startups like flip cart PDM was just emerging in India fortunately in 2015 rocker internet uh reached out to me and uh I ended up joining that company uh in one of the Emerging Markets of Myanmar great learning I must tell you that entrepreneurial spirit in was empowered by that post that uh I came back to India uh joined a company called Meo which is in 20 on photography I was India CEO great learning there as well but then obviously after these two stints was very clear that what lies ahead is always been entrepreneur because I have been doing almost 0 to 10 journey in my career and I wanted to see if I could do it for myself and that's where the idea of numi along with other three founders materialized tell us what numi does if you have to like briefly tell the audience okay what was the goal that you were set out for and it's been 2 and a half years now how has that world and what's something that you do at new me we Empower young women of India to express themselves through fashion I think the idea on day one was India is changing there's a completely new consumer class evolving in India and it is a matter of time that India will tectonically shift from Millennial consumer to a genz consumer because when we were growing up in 2010 we became the biggest consumer class of India we were the ones who adapted to e-commerce the likes of Flipkart minra nabd Amazon were made for us when genz came in 2020 nothing was built for them so there will be a need for different platform different brand which solves their needs and that was a core principle and we thought fashion is the first thing to do that because again our consumer site said that a young woman in India if she's getting money every month she will spend certain portion of that on fashion for sure second is beauty so the clear anecdote for us was that if fashion and Beauty are the biggest set of consideration for a young woman there will be some big Branch being built in the space in India for sure and their opportunity is massive ahead of us and if you're able to scale it with technology still relevant to Consumer we could build one of the biggest brand of the world from India and other nationalist view was that we only have seen fashion brands from the world in top 10 and there's no fashion company from India in top 10 and I think that was one of the patriotism I would say a little bit patriotism view from my perspective that why can't we do it as Indians when we are running the best companies of the world the top Indian managers or the leaders are in best companies of the world why not in fashion why not genz category as a whole and why genz women when we sat down we said that women are the bigger consumer class especially in fashion I think uh fashion is no more just a functional thing in India we call it f is equals to A E and V where aspiration expression and validation is what fashion truly stands for Andi wants to stand on that F equal to a equation so I think very important thing was that we were challenging ourselves on day one which on a comfort zone for us see we all knew how to run run numbers we all knew how to scale the business but keeping guard rails of building fashion for a very young woman were very difficult second thing I think Indian women never an option other than Zara or H&M or say mango to fulfill their EVs and all the denzy women which we met in our first set of research love these three Brands but they can not afford these Brands and the bigger thing is the supply chain for women fashion is much tougher than a men's fashion supp chain so what we believed is if and this for challenge to ourself K are what will we solve for we'll solve for toughest challenge today on day one so if you're able to crack women's fashion supply chain then you can build up Men's Fashion supply chain much easily over time and second thing was I think in all our research we found women far more in dire need of this fashion space compared to men we saw a much bigger white space in Men in women compared to men and we thought that this is a bigger white space why don't we go and solve this first Okay cool so I think want to understand the whole Market opportunity what is it that you're going after what's the share that you're looking at and uh what does the timeline to that look like so I think Market opportunity is pretty big we look at that recent report coming coming from BCG uh which was public on genz consumer it's a next big consumer class in India and they claim to around 200 million genz in India if I even cut out everything and say okay I have 50 million women genz on Instagram that's my easiest St defining today very simple ter not going by any cuts and they are buying for even $10 to $20 per month MTI Market size so it's a huge Market we going behind second thing is that it's not about Winner Takes all Market okay at numi if you're ble to even secure 1 to 1.5% of the business markets also will be pretty big company in India and the world then so I think fashion by default is a very big opportunity what's happening in India today is that a lot of unbranded is going to branded cat earlier 90% fashion was unbranded in India now that stayes changing thanks to the likes of zos of the world hey folks if you have been enjoying the video till now and want more insights about startups and business check out the growx newsletter last month we covered how zomato is entering bookm Show's territory of event booking with a new app called District swis app's 10minute food delivery promise and breakdown of gozo's entire 40 ice cream Playbook check out the link in the description to read the newsletter and keep learning how did you go about acquiring your first Sai hous users I think uh first hous users we used to have a community of young girls in campuses and that was a first set of users required with we thought that genz most of times is in colleges so we said we will go and do something in colleges and that was the first set of users required through very important thing which a lot of people don't know their team was all genzi even though we Four Guys building the company but the first set of all the team members for all genzi women and the idea was we wanted to learn from these young women how to think about F fashion I think that was the way I think the the first team of young jzy women actually became the pivotal or the most important deciding factor for the first set of users in the company their friends would buy I'll tell them ask your friends to buy from us we discount we thought let's understand consumer feedback and we used to be in every single call every week used to have calls with them we will do focus group discussions and you said that you went to the University's offline colleges Community was built but what was the like what was the theme of this community and what happened in that like how did you engage with those young women from the colleges Etc so I think the first set of this activation happened in one of the colleges in Mumbai which was a popup and we saw a lot of fashion brands around us and they were selling products and our core philosophy was we not sell anything idea that I told my team was that you take the products displayed but they can't buy it you will have QR code on the product let them scan and buy it from online they will not sell on the store in the popup I think that became I think first inside consumer start saying designer and I think I got call from them people want to buy it they want to I told our team let's make sure that we can tell them you will not buy it you can earn it how do you earn it what activities activities of doing some some Instagram post some real some content and you will get free of cost to you so I think the Insight that we got that day was that consumers don't want to buy when you tell them when you when you try and sell them the art is in not selling but still selling so I think those those that fine line of understanding the consumer Behavior was very important to was in day one and that allowed us to take some tough calls in business ke how will we build the business which channels we'll operate at will we go on Market places or not will we go offline or not I think these were the guiding principles for us on that day what is the buying habit or purchasing habit of genz that has been something that you've capitalized on what are some things that have like that have really helped you SK like understand understanding that has helped you scale faster I think freshness becomes the biggest lever uh they want to see something new every single time they open that that's one thing second thing is they don't want to get bombarded very important learning for us is you can't bombard them with so many sty that they get confused so you have to keep the curation at the core a consumer can see only 100 to 200 Styles in one one scraw we have seen a data if you show her freshness there that's good enough but very important thing is that you can not make it in mass production then you are not able to keep that aspiration high and third is a quality a bad design at even cheapest price doesn't work in in a journey Des Clarity across the company we have today design is not relevant to them this counting will not work what is the category division of the user in terms of how do they pay or how do they afford uh even purchasing say six a year right I think the two big inherent changes happening in Indian economy right now the GDP per capita has gone up to data points right now so what happens when a GDP per capita goes up as a country your first expenses increase in fashion and Beauty let start Tailwind in our favor it's all statistically data proven that above $2,500 GDP per capita the first investment happens in fashion and then in Beauty so you in a master hierarchy your for basic food shelter and everything so now you want to go and expend expense on your own well-being so fashion and makeup becomes the first way to spend so that's what I think is happening in India which happened in China in 2007 2008 second thing is that genzi if you look at a very normal young consumer of a brand they're mostly in colleges or doing the first second job when they're in colleges they're getting pocket money from their family or they doing gig jobs and those two things actually are inspiring them to buy more so again very important thing is if I ask a very young woman she gets around 10,000 rupees in tier one and 5,000 R in tier 2 as pocket money from her family to take a basic expenses in a college hostel can you believe out of that at least 1500 rupees goes on fashion every single month she will go out on a movie with her friends she will get basic beauty products and one product one one fashion purchase these are four things that a young girl will do every single month in India and as a brand our focus is out of these four can I be top of Mind recall the brand to make purchase for every quarter every once in a three months and that's what we're solving for I think uh in every research we finding this that the decision maker and the family has moved for the youngest person I have seen it with my own eyes in some of the stores I've seen young women buying for their mothers together so uh they both come together to a store and they would want to buy from numi okay and I think the same happening in men's fashion also young genzi want their fathers to look better fashion wise also you've spoken a lot about supply chain uh Sumit can you help us understand what goes into it and how have you cracked it so if you look at traditional brand or traditional company today uh what happens there and I'll just break it a little more detail today they have two month cycle of building the first set of samples two months are gone there so by time design was actually formulated to get a sample out is 2 months time then 2 months of sampling check Etc on fifth month you get the first set of product from consumer's hand minimum 5 months 6 months is average time but 6 month to design might have lost relevance to the consumer already plus you build a very heavy mqq is minimum order quantity in India typical mq is minimum 200 to 300 pieces now what happens here is when you build mq you displayed in online or offline channels now what happens you know what is called sell through so sell through is where a product gets sold as full price and then it gets discounting the channels in India typical fashion companies have 60% sell through only 40% of that doesn't sell and 20% that gets dummed somewhere now what happens of that is the the brands are pricing it higher that they know that Los I'll price it here higher this becomes unaffordable for a lot of consumers in India efficiency of your system or inefficient of our system consumers paying for that at new me we have done the cycle in 7 days we fire we build a first sample in 3 to 4 days it goes live on the platform on fifth day on fifth day there is no inventing system we have full data science model on top of it which prct Demand on every style that goes like this this demand prodction model is exposed to my all my factory Partners they start making designs on Sixth Day for all my consumers on Eighth Day I get my first product in consumer's hand that's how it works so what happens here is I have almost 90% savings on wastage than them with that saving and vage I make my pricing of the consumer much better because my vage inefficiency is minimum in the system plus I am able to bring a design live from seeing to consum in less than 10 days so what you see is what you get is what the Mantra interet numi is can you tell us how has the brand been set like how has Brand been built at numi at numi the the logo itself was very distinctive from day one uh we wanted to to make sure the Gen Z cannot be compartmentalized or bucketed in one Persona and a chameleon allows us to actually Express that as a brand so that was the first I would say fundamental in our journey that consumer they want want to be bucketed a same woman or same young girl when she's in her hometown is weing different fashion when she's Delhi different fashion when in bumbay different fashion and she's buying from for different occasions again so why should the brand have one simple Persona chameleon allows us to be very expressive about that second biggest thing is that at a company level there's no brand guideline or a message guideline the idea of social media or app is make the customer happy with every moment touch them beat the packaging we don't say clothing is arrived we say a new skin has arrived when you go to a store you get a different package say a new me new skin has arrived at a store when you launch je your new bling has arrived ideas relate to the consumer lot of Brands they make it very boring Packaging I'll tell you when we launched our packaging we got so much content about our packaging which were all organic people said packaging same is in the in the store see if you go to any store of India they will make a lot of money on the store facade store and all but TRS are very boring now if you look at a young consumer where decision making happening the trial room why can't it be the most exciting place of the Tri Store we took a upside down approach a trial are the most exciting trial in the entire country and all of them are unique Story the idea is a brand brand the touch point every single time a customer entering a store in Forum falcon or in Orion Mall sees different new me TR are very different and she can create content there we tell them okay don't buy but create content now what happen this is where your brand gets elevated again F equal to a your idea is that you don't sell you you don't sell every time you say okay come and experience our brand so I think as a brand we have taken some calls which are very non-regular or out of the established fundamentals and some of them work some didn't work for us but what worked actually worked very well why will a young consumer go to new every single time every single time you go to a store you find something new in the store and it becomes a very easy hook to bring them every time to the store so the brand has to spend for freshest fashion fastest freshness is the core fashion is the fundamental and fastest is the value if there is someone who wants to today come and build in this C category what are things that you would want to convey to them and what are the learnings that you want you would want to share with them that will allow them to you know set themselves up for success I think fashion by default is a very low entry barrier business fashion doesn't have an entry barrier anybody can open a Shopify website with 30 Styles or 10 Styles also I think what set them sets them apart is the consumer insight and I think I always tell everybody that three big things that any fashion enterpreneur should do one is consumer need gap analysis how will you solve it differently and the role of brand in that if you're able to solve these three fundamentals after got a pyramid I think you have a you have a get a chance to succeed in fashion industry and I think we not fil there's a big connecting part of the team lot of time people don't spend energy in building a team and I think that's where a lot of companies which I have invested into have gone birth because the founders either had their own issues or the team could not scale with the time at numi this is the biggest we also live with so I think if you look at a three pillars plus the Baseline of a team if you solve us for these four things together I think you can have a fairly and I think it could fairly bus business you can easily connect 200 CR 300 business easily out of that from there and I I want to just break a myth here that you don't need Capital you don't need capital in fion you need to understand the capit working capital cycle and you just solve for what will be your real reason to succeed in the consumer's mind if you don't have that then you need so much Capital you don't even know of