Wildcraft, Chumbak design products for Indian sensibilities

Many Indian entrepreneurs are bucking the trend of selling purely western products. Instead they are designing for Indian sensibilities. This new generation of entrepreneurs include Wildcraft, Chumbak, iD Fresh Food and Chai Point.

Wildcraft, which makes outdoor gear and apparel, decided to keep the Indian needs in mind when designing their products. For instance, they realised that Indians use their backpack differently from people in the West. As co-founder Gaurav Dublish points out Indians want ‘organisation (pockets and compartments) in one bag. This reorientation of their strategy and the focus on brand building has borne the desired results. Wildcraft expects sales to increase to Rs 200-220 crore in the year up to March. This will be up from Rs 150 crore a year before. Also, Wildcraft has entered the Middle East and Southeast Asian markets in July 2015.

Amuleek Singh Bijral, founder of Chai Point, designed a business model that was contemporary and cool. He raised venture funds from Saama Capital, Eight Roads Ventures and DSG Consumer Partners. After a year and a half, Bijral realised that they had made a mistake in pricing and location of the brand. A brand had to evoke emotions and this was not happening with theirs. So it shut down 10-15 stores and reopened in upmarket locations. Similarly, Chumbak, which designs quirky bags, magnets, photo frames, T-shirts, mugs etc, realised that selling from kiosks in malls wasn’t doing good to their image. It has now done away with this retail strategy and instead opened exclusive retail stores.