Apparel Manufacturing Saviours Fashinza intends to build a global B2B company out of India to help manufacturers get access to global brands making India to be known for manufacturing.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
A trip to Jaipur in 2019 opened a new door for the cofounders of Fashinza to make a difference in the Fashion Industry. Hailing from a small town of Rajasthan with a family of service background, Abhishek Sharma is the first generation founder. He always wanted to influence the community around him by empowering small and medium entrepreneurs - the backbone of the Indian economy. His stint as a founding member in companies like BharatPe, Limeroad and other startups not only gave him insights from zero to one but also on how to scale businesses. According to Abhishek & Pawan, their trip to Jaipur taught them a lot about the apparel manufacturing in detail and made them understand the interesting predominance of SMEs and women workers in the industry. They were surprised and inspired to witness the dependence of the apparel industry on a 70% female workforce in India where women employment is a major issue. They also noticed how the SMEs had potential but were crippled and stunted due to their lack of technical know-how. This visit inspired them to jump into the fashion industry and aspire to become one of the biggest players in it.
In the journey of building Fashinza, Jamil Ahmad joined with Abhishek & Pawan to realise their dream together. Jamil was the Founding member, heading the fashion and lifestyle business at Limeroad. Being a fashion industry expert, Jamil steers Fashinza as CBO by defining the direction of the business and scalability.
Fashinza's technology driven approach and customer orientation make them stand out from their competitors as they have a unique AI-driven platform that offers an end-to-end digitized sourcing experience to brands. The platform offers real-time updates, factory footage which provides transparency to brands about the production timeline, help manufacturers to streamline communication and receive daily reminders of upcoming tasks and organize documentation for the manufacturers.
The cloud-connected network of 400+ factories enable the brand to share quotes within 24 hours, host digital catalogs of 5000+ factory designs, and reduce overall production time to less than 4 weeks. The company has served over 300 brands so far, with 184 brands in 2021 itself. Major brand partners of Fashinza include Forever 21, Gas, Hummel, Firstcry, Bewakoof, etc. Shararat, a D2C startup with a significant market presence contacted Fashinza due to their agility in production capabilities which led to the brand launching 32 new styles in only 21 days and a new category without investment in infrastructure for design or supply. Also, through Fashinza's partnership with Ace Turtle, they are serving a number of other industry leaders. Fashinza secured a total of $22.6Mn worth of funding in the last round from the investors including Accel Partner, Elevation Capital, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Anand Ahuja, ADQ, Stride Ventures, Alteria Capital and Tradecred. The company has gone through its fair share of ups and downs with its lowest point being the outbreak of the Covid-19 as local and global brands stalled their productions. But the leadership adapted to the situation by shifting their focus to the production of masks for international brands.
Fashinza intends to build a global B2B company out of India to help manufacturers get access to global brands making India to be known for manufacturing. So as for 2022, they are focused on international business expansion in 4-5 countries and are hiring in countries like the U.S., MENA, and Europe.
