January 2020 Edition Apparel January 2020 issue | Página 67

BRAND PROFILE
The Okhamandal area of Gujarat has been home
to many tribal cultures, which are especially
known for their intricate embroidering skills. The
womenfolk of these tribes stitch little details of
their life stories on fabric through embroidery.
Okhai was formed with an intention to provide
these very women with livelihood opportunities.
Today, the brand wholeheartedly pushes
every boundary to take the intricate craft of
Okhamandal far and wide. From a noble intention
to a business, Okhai checks all the right boxes.
Apparel speaks to Kirti Poonia, head, to know
more.
WHAT DREW YOU TOWARDS
HANDCRAFTED TEXTILES?
Growing up, all my dresses where handmade
by my mother and so I had the most unique
outfits on the playground. I started to value the
uniqueness of handcrafted attire and how they
stand out amidst the rest.
When I was six, all I wanted to do was design
and tailor new clothes for my dolls,
and eventually, myself. At 13, I had
made a collection and business
plan for a fashion brand with my
friend, but then, like all ‘good’
Indian kids, I became a software
engineer.
I worked in technology for a
while but my hands used to yearn
to design and stitch, so I spent my
after hours tailoring clothes for a
friend’s independent movie Kshay,
starting an online brand, and volunteering to
create gowns for art projects.
WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES THAT
YOU FACED ALONG THE WAY?
Below are the four main challenges that I faced
during my journey:
1. Scaling up Cottage Industries
The handmade industry is a niche sector,
which makes it difficult to operate at a bigger
scale; but to create impact, one should be
able to scale up. Hence, our focus has been
on developing and deploying processes that
large organisations use. This has helped
us grow. We have seen consistent and
exponential revenue growth in the last few
years. We have gone from engaging with 350
artisans in 2015 to 1,600 in 2019.
2. Marketing Good Design
Indian artisans are skilled but they inhabit
remote villages that are far from the
customers, who intend to buy their products.
Moreover, they are exposed to
limited products and colours,
given their location. This has
been a huge deterrent to
the growth of the handmade
industry. Functional and
aesthetic designs needed to
be developed and at a great
scale. Overcoming this, we
now have a team of talented
designers and we launch almost
50 new designs every month to
compete with bigger brands. In
addition, we are also using data analytics to
develop designs that we are sure will
work. We take designers and customers to
the villages for workshops with the artisans on
colour theory, design thinking, and sometimes,
simply to get a taste of their lifestyle.
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