Seed to stitch: Fabric Monde shows the way Fabric Monde is a B2B player that brings low carbon footprint fabrics of Indian origin to mainstream fashion brands. The company came into existence when the Co-founder & CEO Jyothi D, from IIM Lucknow, discovered that the space of homespun fabrics like khadi was only 2.5% from 2001-14 but had leapt to 35% in 2016-17. After studying the sector and working on several pilots in their business model, the co-founders, Jyothi and Hemalatha, believed they could build an enterprise based on sustainability that has now taken the world by storm.

Fabric Monde works on addressing market linkage for 95 weaver units out of 4859 leads from across 16 states within the first year of establishment.

They are a sourcing partner for 30+ brands and hope to grow this portfolio to 350 brands in the next year. “There are many start-ups in the area of handlooms and sustainable fashion, but they are based on the B2C model. The real challenge lies in sourcing these fabrics for all the small and large labels,” says Jyothi.

Accolades

In the last year, Fabric Monde has been among the:

• Top 50 start-ups in India recognized by Department of Science and Technology (DST) and IIM Calcutta (IIMC) in a competition called SMART 50
• Top 7 start-ups out of 15,000 applications to be selected for the Villgro’s Invent program
• Top 10 start-ups at the Pan IIM startup conclave, Pragati
• Top 10 in Social Venture Challenge(SVC) conducted by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) national competition
• National finalists in 2017 and 2018 in Sandbox Samvidha, a competition conducted by the Deshpande Foundation
• 1 in 100 start-ups to get selected for incubation at IIM Bangalore in 2016
• Top 400 start-ups out of 15000+ applicants in the Women Startup Program (WSP) at IIM Bangalore

The NSRCEL network

The founders credit IIMB’s innovation and incubation hub, the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), for believing in them by investing seed capital, which they say, gave them the freedom to experiment on their business model and pull-off significant revenues post the funding. They say that sector-specific mentors like Naga Prakasam and Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula have been able to help them significantly with industry connections. “Having mentors with entrepreneurial experience helped us shape our strategic direction. Such mentors teach us the basic principles of running a profitable business. Networking with tech start-ups at NSRCEL helps us understand how to leverage technology in a traditional business like ours. This gives us an edge to scale,” explains Jyothi.

The Fabric Monde team believes collaboration with government agencies would help them too. “Entities like the Textiles ministry, the State Handloom Corporations, the KVIC can provide a great platform for us to reach out to the 4.3 million weavers seeking market linkage to their products,” she adds.

Fabric Monde’s team is a combination of graduates from IIT, IIM and NIFT. The energetic team of 16 members, whose average age is below 25, is working on building a business that focusses on solving one of India’s challenges. They want to make India the world’s sourcing hub for sustainable textiles.

Find out more about at http://www.fabricmonde.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FabricMondeLtd/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fabric.monde/

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