Size does matter! For Nidhi Agarwal founder of a startup called Kaaryah, only a couple of sizes won’t do. Her clothes come in 18 sizes. Emerging as one of the most prominent, gen next women business leaders in the country, she worked as the director strategy at Honeywell and was with the team enabling the space and missiles business for the Mangalyaan mission. She’s now addressing problems of the right fit and talks of her learnings as an early stage entrepreneur.
Nidhi who raised funds from Ratan Tata, Mohandas Pai and The Saha Fund, shares of her journey, “I did my MBA from Kellogg School of Management. The idea of Kaaryah came to me with when I accidentally spilled coffee on my shirt before a meeting. Even after a rigorous search, I failed to find a white shirt that fitted me perfectly. That’s when I wondered if Indian women have always had an issue to find the right size in terms of Western wear.
Initially, raising funds was a huge challenge. It took me a year to convince investors that it is possible for a woman in her 30s with little domain expertise to get the model right and to change the market dynamics on the back of innovation. I approached over a 100 investors. Giving up was never an option since I was convinced that I had a sound business idea. Finally, I was able to raise my first round from none other than Ratan Tata. My subsequent round of funding has come from Mohandas Pai and The Saha Fund. My investors and technology partners are all from Bengaluru.”
The lady firmly believes that it is important for women to feel confident about their bodies and know what looks good on them. “We help women realise just that, with a range of 18 different sizes and give them the best possible fit. There’s a highly accurate “What’s My Size” algorithm that has proven 85 per cent parity in terms of correct sizing. I ran a survey and was quite astonished to find that a huge majority of women, close to 80 per cent, mentioned that they also faced similar problems. I decided to focus on providing women with well-fitted and stylish Western wear.”
As a corporate woman with a busy lifestyle herself, Nidhi understood the importance of well fit, functional, feminine and fashion-forward Western wear. She wants to make everyone understand that women have different body types and therefore need 18 different sizes. She exults, “I’ve also been recognised as CNBC’s Young Turk and have been featured on Start up Grind by Google, Bloomberg TV’s Women Mean Business and was part of the Sheroes summit, Intel Innovates and Heads Up. We have also been awarded Top Digital Company and I was among India’s Top 60 women entrepreneurs.”
