Passionate about promoting the unrivaled skills of Indian artisans, Vittal Govind Paunikar started a garments manufacturing business in Nagpur. When his son Shashank joined him, he looked towards taking the business online and reaching customers directly. After joining the Flipkart Samarth program, the father-son duo not only leveraged pan-India access, but also gave more artisans a platform to thrive. Read their story.
Based in Nagpur, home to India’s first textile mill, father-son duo Vittal Govind and Shashank Paunikar run a garments business that leans on the skills of various Indian artisans. Today, their business is thriving with the reach and access that digital commerce offers, but that wasn’t always the case.
When Vittal Paunikar gave up his government job 20 years ago to start his own business at the age of 45, he knew it was a gamble. But the aspiring entrepreneur was certain of one thing – he wanted to work with Indian artisans whose craftsmanship, skills and experience with textiles were truly remarkable. When his son Shashank joined the business, he looked to leveraging e-commerce to reach a larger audience and introduce his father’s B2B business directly to consumers.
Joining the Flipkart Samarth program allowed their company to break new ground, not only supporting the growth of their business, but also in helping the artisans employed with it to flourish as well. Read their story in Shashank’s own words.
Beginning Off the Beaten Track
I work as a software engineer at an MNC. My father, Vittal Paunikar, was a government employee but left his job before his official retirement age. He started a business at the age of 45 since he wanted to work with local Indian artisans and got into manufacturing clothing for men, women and kids. This was about two decades ago and at that time we only served local retailers in and around Maharashtra.
While he sold our products to well-known retailers, I studied, worked and learnt more about the prospects of e-commerce. I also wanted to explore new avenues of sales. I wanted to get into a business where I could reach out to more customers directly, and I saw the population of India as a huge opportunity.
That’s when we seriously started to consider digital commerce. We understood that the market did not recognize us. We had manufactured for other brands, but just 5 years ago, we started our own. We came up with a brand name, Uvee, and tried to understand the market more thoroughly.
Learning As We Went
My father’s journey early on taught us many things. We realized that customers wanted good quality stitching and durable fabrics, at an affordable cost. So, we tried to give customers these benefits with all of our products.
When my father started out, there was no designer to help us. We used to source good quality raw materials from Bhiwandi, Surat and Ahmedabad and hired just 5 Indian artisans to start with. A few among them were local and others were from West Bengal and Odisha. Their quality of work was great, which helped us get business from big retailers. We were producing a good number of kurtis every month, but also discovered that it was the ideal time to scale up.
Empowering Indian Artisans – The Heart and Soul of the Business
That was when we increased our strength to 40 people, and since business was growing, we bought 40 more machines as well. At this point our workers were a mix of local Indian artisans from Nagpur and from other areas like Kolkata. With the help of these skilled artisans, we were able to ensure that our colors did not bleed, our collar lines were perfect and our finishing on buttons was impeccable.
The five artisans we originally started out with are still with us today. They now look after the different aspects of the business – while one of them heads manufacturing, the other looks after procurement and yet another handles packing and online orders. I have seen their families grow alongside our business, and we are all part of one unit.
This is what my father always wanted: Indian artisans thriving and their skills helping a business thrive too. After all, my father and I do not come from a business family. What helps us succeed are the artisans who work alongside us.
The Flipkart Chapter
Our journey with Flipkart was surprising to say the least. We joined Flipkart in June 2018, and the Samarth program in 2019. While we knew The Big Billion Days were coming up, we kept our expectations low. We were selling just 1-2 products a day before that, and we were expecting about 50 orders during The Big Billion Days sale. But this was not the case.
We suddenly started to get 250 orders a day, 5 days in a row. We were not prepared! We had to pause and restock to meet the demand. I have to say that The Big Billion Days was a very fortunate thing for us. During this time, sellers like us can make up for any ups and downs during the year and really drive up our sales. After our first BBD, our daily orders also increased, perhaps since we gained visibility and customers recognized our quality. We realized that we had access to a very big market right here through Flipkart.
Earlier, we were only supplying to local vendors, but with Flipkart we are getting orders from the North, South, and also the Northeast! While we have a lot of orders from the East, reaching customers across India is exciting and the growth has been immense. In the early days, our revenue through online sales in a quarter was usually Rs.30,000. And I still remember the quarter after our first BBD – we ended at Rs.30 lakhs. That was a big deal! It has been a good journey with Flipkart.
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