 Hello everyone. Sustainability and inclusivity are words which every brand nowadays loves to incorporate whether it is in their communication or even in this product. But I have a brand here today whose very genesis lies in inclusivity and I'm very happy to have with me Udhita Bansal. She's the founder of True Browse. Udhita, welcome to Prish Brantor. Thank you Simran. Thank you for inviting. Very excited for this chat. Udhita, I just want to take a step back in your journey and you know you start how you started your entrepreneurial journey. What inspired you to create an urban ethnic fashion brand True Browse and how is the brand vision evolved since the brand's inception? So True Browse started from a pure customer need and that customer was me myself where I wanted, I was moving towards wanting to wear ethnic, embrace ethnicity, but in a more contemporary way and could not find go-to brands for the product that I was looking for. And so it stemmed from there and supported by market validation on the market size on where the industry was moving, where the consumer trend was moving, conceptualized True Brown. So this is back in 2016 when I started doing product market fit and there at that point of time there was a and even today, right, there was this going back to the roots thing with consumers Ayurveda, yoga, embracing ethnicity was beginning to rise. Post COVID, post pandemic, it is all the more at its peak. So market clearly was moving towards ethnicity in India and my product market validation for about two years like we went live on few platforms to test our product and pricing and quality gave us the confidence to incorporate in 2019 when we started our own brand website and we went all out in terms of marketing and going live with a lot of other market places. So that has been the start and from the very beginning, we have been an inclusive brand. In fact, when we were testing our product, we were offering from till up to 10 Excel. So that was the ready size ready garments that we were providing and why inclusive again a wanted to build a brand out of just as is this of life. So and when that I mean it trickles down to the product, basically we are saying we all all shapes sizes, everyone is included, right? So from there, the inclusivity started initially was still about 10 Excel and then in fact, that's the change that happened till about 2019, where from 10 Excel we moved to about 6 Excel in terms of our offering when we incorporated the company. But yes, truly believe in being inclusive as a brand. Our vision initially was in fact, actually from the very beginning, our vision has been to be a global brand. I remember when I was setting the Facebook page name, I set it as true Brown's global because it was it was very clear that we build the brand, we get bigger in India and eventually we should go international. Our international journey started last year, I can come to that later. But the vision has been to be a global urban ethnic brand from India and we are on that journey. I want to come back to inclusivity and the international plans a little later, but how do you look back at the challenges and how did you overcome them in the initial phase? See, I mean, all founders go through challenges. It's part and parcel of building something. But I think one thing that A, I was very clear as to what I wanted to build. So holding very tight to build the right product was something that helped us in establishing what True Brown's was all about. So in the initial time, we were not doing a lot of brand marketing. Our only marketing was our product. And one thing which actually worked in the initial years was after two years, three years, people started looking at the product and saying, is this from True Brown's? And that was a huge win for us. So I think consistency of product helped us move, helped us take a step further in the market of apparel. So that challenge of how do you differentiate yourself from a product that started coming out very, very clearly. That's one. Second, you know, more at a personal level, just head on, just keep building, keep building, keep building. Of course, there are a lot of challenges setbacks, but keep improvising in terms of whatever consumers are saying, what the data is saying helped us move forward in this journey. You know, when I look at the larger market over the last two years, there is clearly two different types of brands, particularly for women. One is you've had the regular brands wherein you offer sizes from say XS to, you know, XXL or XXXL. And then for you know, for other women who are larger, you know, you have your, that's where you go for your plus size brands. But your one brand, which you know, right from the start, you've incorporated this inclusivity where everyone can shop this, you know, if someone is wearing an XS, the same person can get it, say even a XXXL. So how did this positioning help build brand salience? And is this still a continuing brand differentiator for this, for you? It was definitely a different differentiator in the beginning, Simran. Two things from a data perspective, like about 20, 22% of our sales were coming from the extreme sizes. So that was a very clear indication that the market is very, very big. And we had a lot of customer feedback on saying that we don't get great garments readily available in the market at these sizes. So we just went deep dive into doing this more honestly, looking at our design language, looking at what we are doing for the bigger sizes. Initially, in the initial days, we, in fact, our only one of the biggest differentiator was that we were a size inclusive brand. And that is that is that became the marketing point at marketplaces, wherever we went, basically, and that led to being being our big, biggest differentiator in the industry. Today, there are other brands that have come up, who are providing the extreme sizes. Having said that, this still remains a good differentiator for the brand. But is this the only differentiator that we are building as a brand? No, we have, of course, a vault where we are saying, okay, we are a brand built out of consciousness. This is what we stand for. This is the woman that we are catering to. This is the product that we are doing. So in the larger scheme of things, as our journey progressed, our offering, our standpoint has also evolved. So inclusivity is not the only point for us. Now, having said that, this has become a hygiene for us. You know, when you started as a digital D2C, D2C brand, and at that point of times, you don't have that much of money is also for marketing. So, you know, what can you just share some of the insights and learning that you had, you know, because you leveraged a lot of e-commerce, retail marketing. So anything that you can share with us, like how this helped your brand grow? Sure. Simran, I would say we were a digital brand. We started website, pull Fledgically in terms of a lot of performance marketing spent slightly later. Initially, we were very, very aggressive on marketplaces because you rightly said there's a lot of money needed for performance marketing. And that was a challenge with us as well. So we went very aggressive with marketplaces and we went all out. I remember I was listing everywhere from very big platforms to small platforms. And the reason was this, because we wanted to understand where our consumer is, what are they saying? We also wanted to test which platform is actually doing well for us, right? So this, you know, the one, and this is, this is one thing I would tell everyone today that today the marketplace is so well settled in terms, and it is such a good platform for brands to test that go live on marketplaces and that actually helps to test your product. And this is what we did. The good part of that was on smaller marketplaces, we did well everywhere, but on smaller marketplaces, we became the biggest, one of the biggest brands and that got us a lot of marketing on its own, you know, the marketing that you're talking about. So the marketing actually started for the brand from marketplaces where a good product got us good sales, that got us the marketplace pushing the brand a lot in their marketing. And hence the visibility of the brand overall saw a jump, a lot of visibility we got from marketplaces. So that is the true, I would say, marketing that we did in the beginning. Post that after about two and a half years we started, I mean, we started our website, but we started small in terms of performance marketing spend, we used to be very, very careful in terms of what rest we are getting our conversions and everything even today, of course, but slowly that journey began in terms of doing the performance marketing spend for DPC. We're talking about going cookie less. So any, you know, you can share how you're leveraging your data and technology to kind of optimize how you reach your customer because you do have data from the marketplace also from your microsite. So how is it helping you to better target your customer? We are using data very, very extensively and now we have a lot of data from our own website as well. I think one of the biggest actionable and points that for us is that and maybe a lot of brands are doing this today, reach out to the customer on the channel. They are easiest to convert. So whether it is going to be WhatsApp, whether it's going to be an emailer or whether it's going to be sending others a form of communication to a customer. So using data to basically make customer cohorts and reach to them on the channel at a particular time of the day in a particular kind of content format that they will engage with the brand, come to our website and spend some time there. So that is one of the key points of using data. Secondly, we trickle down to use data in terms of having analysis for our sizes as well. Considering we are up to 6x, there is a lot of need to look at what consumers are seeing and where which product has what kind of feedback from the customer, where do we have higher returns, while returns, what the customer is saying in terms of why did they return it, what is the pattern in terms of silhouette to the returns to the size where the returns are highest. We are building an automation at our back end in the office where in the company where all of this analysis is going to become automated. So we've used data till now in this aspect but we're going to automate this part of data crunching. From an online brand, you've now become offline and also you've gone international. So can you just talk about this because you're very excited about the international part of it also. So can you talk about it in your plans on scaling up? Yes, definitely. Yes, you're right. Very excited about going international and scaling up there. We started international in Jan 23 and month on month it has it has maybe grown 100% or more than that. So we're very excited to build international market. US is our biggest market and there's a lot of potential that we see for the brand to grow internationally. In fact, we're going to build the international channel now as a separate business where we go all out in terms of building all channels for international doing international specific marketing, brand marketing and channel marketing and eventually maybe look at content also suitable only for international markets. So this is the plan to grow international offline. Also very excited. We started our shop and shop journey last year today. We are with the shop stop. We are with iconic. We are with the DLF. We have a pop up with DLF with Nike offline. We are there. So our offline journey also has been extremely positive. There is a great customer feedback. There is a great growth that we are seeing in offline. So from a vision perspective, it is to expand now in our exclusive outlets. So hopefully in the in this in the coming year, we're going to have stores we've not signed anything yet. But yes, we are very focused in terms of building our exclusive outlets and expand our current SS. You know, you also entered into the jewelry space and also into the men's urban ethnic fashion space. So how does this stand out? So jewelry will launch in April 23 men's we launched in October 23. All of this was last year. Great response again. Men's is doing better than jewelry way, way better and we have more than what we had expected. So we had expected that it would be like from that launch, it would be 10% of the of that new launch in the contribution. It's about 30% great response, domestic and on an international channel. So menswear is also some is something that we're going to build on jewelry is also as a category because eventually the vision of the brand is to become a lifestyle brand. We will go deep into other categories as well and going to go deep into jewelry and launch other categories as well. And menswear as an extension is giving us great confidence. So this is this that was a trial in October 23, but clearly it's not not just a trial anymore, we will build our menswear as well. In addition to inclusivity, the other big USB is sustainability. Now, you know, unfortunately, the perception which comes to being a sustainable brand is expensive and the price points are higher. So what is your thoughts on that is, you know, so is sustainable brand is being sustainable with a higher price point? Is that sustainable? Or how should have, you know, how should brands probably look at this? Or how do you educate the customer? Yeah, so Simran, actually, you know, we don't call ourselves sustainable, we call ourselves conscious. And the reason is this, we want to be absolute honest with our customers. We are not 100% sustainable today because there are of course, wasted is happening. And as long as there are wasted happening, we will, but our intent is to be absolute conscious about our how we what are we making from our design language to how do we produce to how do we make that product reach the customer? So we call ourselves conscious. It's a journey. And it starts from a design language where we are saying we make minimal minimal looking products and in great quality fabric from a from a perspective of that it's going to last longer in your wardrobe for many years. And that automatically means that we are saying that we are saying no to overconsumption. And that means lesser dump in the landfill. So from our production processes where wastages are aligned as much as possible. The leftovers are used to make products like bandanas, stoles, masks were made during the pandemic to the last mile delivery where our packaging is plastic free. We avoid using any kind of plastic in our packaging. So everything is consciously done. So we call ourselves a conscious brand and not a sustainable brand because the day we are 100% sustainable, we will call ourselves 100% sustainable. We don't use polyester. We don't use fabrics which are not good for the environment. Coming to your question that are sustainable products more expensive? From a they are more they are slightly expensive because today I think brands should not call themselves sustainable till they don't till they don't have the certificate to call themselves sustainable. That is I think point one. Second, it's expensive to a certain extent but not to the point that it is not achievable and it customers will not appreciate it. So a lot of work has to happen in educating the customers, making the customers understand, believe, accept as to why they should pick a consciously made product. The day that happens and it is that journey is going very well in India I believe. There is a clear shift in the way consumers want to use products today. Hence that difference of perception of whether it is expensive or not will start changing. It's a game of accepting the why of why it's important to build on consciously made products. You just recently launched a new campaign. Can you tell us a little about it and the metrics you hope to achieve with it? Malang. Oh yes. So we've in fact just launched about I think not even 10 days back. So too soon to speak about metrics but the overall feedback on the campaign on our launch is extremely extremely well. Consumers are loving. Have you seen the campaign by any chance? Yes I did. Oh wow. So yes there's a great feedback on the campaign, on the storyline that we've built with every campaign we try to bring the True Browns woman closer to our consumers as to who she is, how is her lifestyle. So it's doing extremely, I mean the number of messages I've received after the campaign got launched gave me the confidence it's done a good job on this from just a small thing like too soon to say as I said it's just 10 days but the usual traction that we see on a new launch on this campaign we are seeing double the traction hoping that this will mature further and give us bigger returns and the more confidence to build this further but to start with as in I think it's a great start on the on the launch. I just have a couple of more questions firstly you know what percentage of your revenue comes from online versus that is from the e-commerce market places versus your Microsoft versus your own website and if you could also just you know guide tell me about how you know how much of it is still being primarily from women and you said mentioned the men's segment has seen a huge traction you've seen over there as well as international so you could just make us understand a little bit about how things are placed at the moment. So today our brand website is about 70 75 percent when we started as I said we were more market places because we were very you know so that time market places were about 80 percent or more and the website was very small today our own website is about 75 percent and international of this of the domestic of the own website business is about 25 percent so international is also very very healthy for the brand. For menswear I think it's not going to be a great comparison because it was a trial that we did our so the from an inventory of what was there in what the offering that was there in women's wear versus men's wear there was a lot of difference so I think we'll hold on to that number in terms of what the menswear contribution looks like for the brand we would let it mature evolve and then come to it but yes the initial traction the initial response was three times of what we had actually planned and vision is to keep our brand website as our key channel because we are not just we are not selling a product we're building a brand and we're building a story we want consumers to you know connect with us on the vibe of true browns of who this woman is what is she wanting to do and how she needs her life be a part of that then you know automatically love the product so brand website clearly because that means a lot of brand marketing a lot of content a lot of storytelling so brand website is going to be our key channel and yes we're going to trickle down into menswear get into more categories build jewelry further that is what the what our plans are for the coming year and finally you know when we are ending the financial year so what's been the growth year and year that you've seen and what can we expect what is the target that you're looking at for the next year so um f520 uh 23 uh we grew about three times uh of f522 this year we've grown about two times uh of the previous year and the next year we see about uh growth of about one 1.5 times um so yeah that's the plan as of now but hoping we cross we overdo these numbers uh thank you so much for your time it was a lot lovely talking to you and more power to true browns as you go ahead thank you so much thank you so much lovely talking to you