 My husband was a huge driving force behind and he says, you know what, you have this idea and he says, you have to take it on, you know, and at worst what will happen, you know, it's fine. Welcome to Entrepreneur India. We have Shreen Mansanga, founder of Needledust with us. Hello, welcome Shreen. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much. It's so nice to be here with you guys. Shreen, so please share with me your journey. How did you start Needledust? So Needledust started about five and a half years ago and it was purely by accident. I finished my journalism school and I came back to be a journalist, an investigative journalist. And I met my husband back then and we decided to get married and I took some time off. And I had a very clear picture, like any other girl how you want to look like as a bride. I put my focus with my shoes and I was actually just pleased. So and I thought like, you know, I had like a certain design in mind, which is still on my shelf. It's called Forever Yours, the gold congruent design. And I had it in my mind and I thought it would be so easy for me to find it, you know. Like if it's come to mind, my head of course it's out there. But when I started looking for it like in just bed and find the one I was looking for. So I said, okay fine, I'll get it made, no big deal, they'll make it for me, right. So when I sort of like, I started like going around with my sketch saying this is what I want. They said, I'm going to put so much effort in one, you know. So at that point, I started looking for like an artisan who would make me the shoe. Anyways, you know, after like certain like two and four, I found like artisans, you know. So I got my embroidery done, like, you know, I purchased materials and this and that and put my shoe together. Remember when my friends and family came from, you know, all over the world and other parts of India for my wedding. And everyone loved it. And I just an idea came to me. I said, hey listen, I, there is, it took me such a long time to find the perfect pair. And there might, there might be girls out there like me that would want to wear jitties but it's something different, something extraordinary, something beautiful. That's one available in the market. And I want to do this. I want to explore this and that's how needle art started. That's one different chain but like how did the business start? So I don't come from a design school. Yeah. I come from journalism school and obviously starting was quite a learning experience. Every day, like it's, I learn every day on my job, you know. Back then it was just more about finding karigas, you know, like finding artisans. I had few designs in mind. I wanted to pop pretty exciting jitties but I had no idea where it was going to go. I remember starting with just like a hundred shoes, you know. For like footwear, that's just six designs and it's six sizes and five sizes back then. It's not like a huge quantity. And I thought fine, you know, I'll start this. I'll take the plan and if it doesn't happen, I'll give it to my friends and family, you know, at the most. And I manufactured hundred shoes and I remember we sold them through an online portal which is not needle art. There was another online portal called Exclus3.n. And I sent it to them and I said could you just share it on, you know, like put it on your e-commerce website. And they put it on the e-commerce website and I had no idea what to do. What it was going to be on the seventh day of us going live on their website. I get an email from them saying congratulations, we're sold out. When can we get the next stock? And there was no stock because I didn't even think I'll sell these. And that's how it started, honestly. So your business was earlier, always online? Yeah, so I started with an online portal because I didn't know if I could invest. I didn't have the guts to invest in a brick and mortar store like in a retail space, physical space or even an online store which was only needle dust. So I didn't have the guts to do it and I didn't know whether it was worth the investment. Because obviously when you start something new, you know, it's a brand new idea. At that point, nobody was doing jitties, designer jitties, nobody was putting that sort of effort in jitties as a footwear which is a dying handicraft. So for me to like pack that investment was a huge, you know, sort of like a, it was confusion, you know. But when we went along with another e-commerce website that sort of gave me an assurity that, yeah, there are people out there who love it. I started getting a lot of personal messages. After that I got, I picked up a really tiny little store in Sharper Jart and it's the same store I have today but it's just become four times its space. And that's why I opened my first needle dust store which is a really tiny one in Sharper Jart and that's where I started from. And then we went on to open our exclusive online store needledust.com where now we shipped to over 200 countries. So a lot of success that you received was also because of social media. Yeah. The way needle dust Instagram pages for example. Yeah. So what do you think the role of social media was in your business journey? The new age media is massive for startups, massive for people with newer ideas and I tell people this all the time today when we have discussions with real friends, family. I always give a lot of credit of my work or the success of needle dust for social media. I think because of social media and now needle dust ships to 200 countries the fact that people know more about my product from sitting in Italy, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, you know, China all sorts of places in the world like things that I never imagined needle dust could reach. I mean sometimes you get orders online and I'm like wow and from local names not NRIs from local names and I'm like that's incredible. So the jitties reaching places where we never imagined it to reach and that is all thanks to social media. You have no designing background stream so what were the difficulties that you faced? I had never like, I had never sketched, you know. So like for me to translate my idea to the cardigans. So I had to learn, you know, I sort of had to learn basically sketching I had to basically learn how to put colours together. I didn't know, I didn't know words like kha kha or dark and who's. These are things I learnt from the cardigans and what's really amazing I feel like through my processes the guys who actually do the work, the artisans are your biggest teachers and then nobody can teach you what they do. Even today sometimes they come up with some beautiful ideas and they're like mammy's ko aise karein, I'm like yeah show it to me and then it becomes beautiful. Your jitties are very popular among Bollywood stars. So who was your first Bollywood client and how did the client grow so fast? The first client, celebrity client was Sonim Kapoor and it started from there, you know, we went to Ria Kapoor and Ria Kapoor put me on her team and we sent them like the first product and we just launched Needle Dust back then. I remember they Instagrammed us, you know, Ria and Sonim and that was amazing. So it started from there and now it's just very natural. We just, we concentrate on doing beautiful designs and we never thought like we were a part of, we did the wedding Padmavad, student of the year post-launch and then we did Priyanka Chopra's wedding where we launched the Abhujani Salip Khosna line. We did Deepika Padukone and the recent wedding where we did Mehendi gifting for them. Sophie Turner and Daniel Jonas ended up wearing our jitties. So it was really amazing. So you guys never have a creative block? We do, of course we do, all the time. Like we have a creative block all the time because sometimes what you have in your head doesn't necessarily translate onto like physical shoes, you know. And then you're trying so hard to crack it, you're trying so hard and this doesn't happen. And then what we do when a creative block happens is just stop it. I'm like let's stop it, let's take a break for two days and then come back with fresh ideas. And yeah, that's what happens. And anything else that you would like to share about your journey? Neela's store like design happened to me absolutely pure accidental and by chance. And I just want to say if you have an idea, act upon it. No idea is too big or too small to give up or not to sort of take on. Okay, so this is Shreena Maan Sangha with us. Nice talking to you Shreena. Thank you Daira. It was so lovely speaking to you. Thank you so much. I've had a great day. Hi guys. I'd like to wish all the ladies out there watching me and entrepreneur India a very happy women's day. I hope 2020 brings in a lot of newer cooler ideas, a lot of new women entrepreneurs and a lot more success stories this year.