Creative minds that rode global brands to build businesses amid Covid

E-commerce giants Etsy and Amazon have been very supportive of these entrepreneurs, who sell anything from jewellery made from concrete, to maternity gowns, to premium decals for tiles and walls

When Tesla chief Elon Musk recently sent a simple tweet “I kinda love Etsy” the Nasdaq-listed e-commerce company’s stock surged by as much as eight per cent. Etsy, the New York-headquartered online marketplace for handmade and unique items, is witnessing a similar surge in business 8,000 miles away in India due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has accelerated the adoption of e-commerce. Etsy India saw ‘new shop opens’ increase by 45 per cent across 2020 compared to 2019. It now has startups and sellers, most of whom consist of women entrepreneurs from every part of the country, and there are more than 2.8 million listings from India. These startups sell products ranging from jewellery made from concrete, maternity clothing like gowns to premium decals for tiles and walls, which are witnessing huge demand from all over the world.

Since starting operations in 2018 India, Etsy’s focus has been to mobilise the creative community in India and enable small and micro-entrepreneurs in finding global audiences. Its efforts have been more towards building a community than just building a huge supply chain. With this approach, the economic impact has gone to the small sellers and not to the resellers or big exporters.

“The pandemic has helped in breaking the psychological barriers of getting online and small sellers have realised that online retail is a much more democratic way to build a business,” said Himanshu Wardhan, managing director, Etsy India. “We’ve just scratched the surface of the Indian market. Our ambition is to enable any creative maker with the right set of tools and support so that they can turn their ideas into successful businesses.”

One such startup is Hyderabad-based KaribyKriti founded by Kriti Jindal, an alumnus of  Lady Irwin College, Delhi University and Pearl Academy of Fashion. Her job had taken her places, one of them being Australia. However, while she was there, she met with an accident because of which she was bedridden for six months and had to quit her job. She started blogging about her love for textiles and weaves and set-up her startup on Etsy. Jindal sells block print fabrics products for homes such as quilts, pillows and accessories.

“The last year has been an interesting time in business especially to understand the customers,” said Jindal. “As a home decor business, I saw a hockey stick growth in sales.”

Kriti Jindal, founder, KaribyKriti (Left), and a quilt created by her enterprise

Etsy has been extremely supportive of its sellers during this pandemic. It came up with several initiatives to help the sellers such as, not charging a commission on sales made via Etsy, offsite ads and refunding listing charges for handmade masks listed during April and May last year.

Among them is Lucknow-based Ruchi Pugalia, who runs ComfyMommy, which creates comfort-wear for new mothers and their babies. An alumnus of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, left behind a prosperous career in the film industry. Working as an assistant director for films like Bheja Fry and Mixed Doubles, she usually worked for about 20 hours a day and decided to be her own boss. She is now a very successful seller on Etsy, and most of her customers are from the US and Europe. Pugalia has sold over 20,000 products in 15 countries on Etsy till now. When the lockdown was imposed it was pretty sudden, and the pending orders had to all be refunded. The buyers on Etsy were understanding of the situation. The platform updated delivery dates according to the situation. But it got a good number of orders coming in for later deliveries also. Etsy on the other hand conducted many online sessions and seller driven workshops that helped everyone to stay connected despite distance and lockdowns. “Rarely do we see an e-commerce platform this big to be so invested in humans,” said Pugalia.

The pandemic has proven opened new opportunities for the home decor category as most people are staying at home and experimenting to decorate their houses. This trend boosted sales on Etsy for Bengaluru-based Bleucoin run by Vinita Dubey. Bleucoin which sells products such as premium decals for home decor witnessed a growth of 30 to 40 per cent in its business than usual during the pandemic. Dubey said Etsy helped her venture overcome the financial burden of fee payment due dates by extending the same. It also helped her to ramp up sales through off-site ads for a few months at no cost to sellers which helped her to garner additional sales during tough times. They now have orders, from all over the world, including the Fiji Islands.

E-commerce giant Amazon is also witnessing a large number of female entrepreneurs in its marketplace, whose businesses are thriving during the pandemic. They are leveraging digitization and e-commerce in particular, to create products and build scalable businesses that have a meaningful impact on society.

Among them is Vijaya Rajan’s nutritious snack company Sirimiri. She had founded the firm in 2017, after not being able to find a brand that offered nutritious snacks, devoid of preservatives and artificial components, for her husband. Her husband was undergoing intense training to swim the English Channel. She began tinkering with various ingredients to make such products. The positive feedback she received from friends and family encouraged her to take Sirimiri to a larger audience. Rajan joined the Amazon Saheli program and is able to brand, market and sell her products on Amazon.in.

Ruchi Pugalia, founder, ComfyMommy (left) and a maternity gown made by her set-up

Another such venture is Jackinthebox set up by Mudita Todi Ajmera along with her husband Ashish Ajmera in 2015. The company is a craft toy brand that is focused on nurturing the imagination of children through carefully planned activities. With Jackinthebox, they piloted the toys locally at first, to observe how children interacted with them. After receiving positive responses, they began selling offline to schools and toy stores. But their vision was to build a global brand. This drove them to register with Amazon’s Global Selling program. Since joining the Global Selling program, the brand has hundreds of thousands of customers across 15 countries including the US,  Canada, Germany and UAE. Their revenue has grown 2x year-on-year. They are now competing with some of the biggest names in the sector. 

Amazon also runs the Amazon Launchpad programme that supports entrepreneurs by providing resources, expertise, and global support to help showcase and deliver innovative products to millions of customers. Sabeena and Nishath, a sister duo from Tirupur are part of this programme where they sell apparel products under the brand ‘Goodtry G’. As part of the programme, they received support with respect to various aspects including marketing, sales support and distribution. Apart from this, they got access to a large base of customers from across the country. This has allowed them to sell products from Tirupur to various parts of the country, catering to customers even from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. ‘Goodtry G’ initially started as a brand that catered to women. The company has been able to invest its profits and create additional product lines catering to the menswear and kidswear segments as well. They sell a wide variety of products which includes t-shirts, hoodies, shrugs and pants amongst others. The support and insights provided by the Launchpad team have enabled the company to grow from a team of two individuals to one that supports over 100 employees today. Amazon said Sabeena and Nishath are now successful millionaire sellers, witnessing over 10x growth in revenue since they first joined Amazon.