How an ex-Deloitte engineer built a Rs 137 crore women’s wear brand starting with Rs 3.5 lakh from her 2BHK home

 

Eleven years ago, Night ADAV, then a 23-year-old computer engineer working at Deloitte, Hyderabad, quit his job to pursue his passion and enrolled in a one-year course in Fashion Buying and Merchandising at the Polio Fashion School, Florence, Italy. Today, she owns AKS Clothing, a women's clothing brand with a turnover of Rs 137 crore which started in 2014 with Rs 3.5 lakh at her 2BHK home in Guru gram.

Night had been married for less than two years and her daughter Sindhi was just a seven-month-old baby when AKS launched as an online brand with a modest inventory of Kurtis, alkalis, maxi dresses, Gehenna and traditional dresses. Her husband, Satpal ADAV, who holds an MBA from IIM Kozhikode, encouraged her to start her business and accompanied her to Jaipur to buy the clothes.

“I was excited to start a modern clothing brand like Zara, but my husband, who at the time worked in Along as an operations manager, felt there was more room for ethnic clothing,” says Night, retracing the journey of AKS (which means Reflection in Hindi). At the start of their business, they used the guest room of their 2BHK stock house. "I remember we had 936 sets of clothes in our first inventory,” Nidhi explains.

“We took pictures of the products and put them on e-commerce portals. We have limited investment." By starting the business from home, we saved on rent, and it was also easier to manage my daughter, who was only seven months old at the time. For about a year and a half, Nidhi managed everything by herself. She packed,, and then the housekeeper trained her to do the job. He sold the products through Lime road, Jabong and later also through Myntra. These companies collected the products from his home.

Nidhi got her clothes from Jaipur. She quickly identified three units who agreed to tailor clothes for her. "The export industry was collapsing then. That was the main reason why we could place small orders We received a 30-day credit period, which increased over time to 60 and 90 days. Since the business began to earn an impulse, the products occupied more space in their home,, and they were stacked in the room and the lanai in addition to the bedroom."

We couldn't really source the fabric at that time, and there's also a lot of waste when it comes to women's clothing, so we recycled it and made baby clothes out of the same material. Nidhi grew slowly and the first hired in 2015 and added three more employees the following year. Her husband joined the company in 2018 and now AKS has grown into a team of 110 members. The team includes five tailors and a team of designers, who take Nidhi's input and create The tailors then work on the designs and create samples which are sent to partner factories in Delhi and Jaipur for mass production They produce fabrics from Surat, Ahmedabad and Jodhpur.

” The production of 50% is done in Delhi and the other 50% in Jaipur,” says Nidhi. “We don't think we've accomplished anything significant, but some things make us feel like we're doing something right. He reveals that AKS was part of Myntra's acceleration program. Nidhi has every reason to be happy with her entrepreneurial journey so far, even if she just doesn't want to settle down where she is. She always wanted to be top,, and it's too early to rest on our laurels. Born to a couple of lawyers Karan Singh Yadav and Rajbala Yadav in Indore, Nidhi grew up with her younger brother. She attended Indore Public School and graduated from Grade 12 in 2004.

“I was a hardworking and studious little girl,” she says. "I always wanted to be top of the class and the attitude stuck with me. I spent my summer vacation afternoons designing different types of clothes. I realized much later that I was destined for the fashion industry. Nidhi thought his interest in design and clothing was just a hobby, and so he continued to do his B Tech (200408) at Co.

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