Prabhkiran Singh, Founder CEO, Bewakoof, talks of the D2C brand’s birth in his dorm room at IIT Bombay in 2012, its ‘light-hearted’ philosophy, tying up with ‘hatke’ brands to launch a curated e-commerce marketplace and target to clock Rs 500 crore in brand sales in the next 12 months.
Please take us through Brand Bewakoof’s journey since inception and its underlying philosophy. What prompted you, an IIT graduate, to move away from high-paying jobs to turn entrepreneur?
I always believed that good quality things in life should be affordable. I was brought up in a middle-class family and while growing up, I couldn't afford supreme quality/branded products, and that’s how I started planning my entrepreneurial journey from an early age. I started with my first business venture - a lassi cafe, known as Khadke gLASSI - right from my college days at IIT Bombay. Bewakoof was co-founded later in 2012, out of the dorm room with an initial investment of Rs 30,000 in my second year of college. I was always motivated to make a fashion brand that is affordable for the masses and back then, when we started, the D2C industry didn’t exist. Bewakoof is one of the pioneers in building the direct-to-consumer industry in the country and was the first one to cross the Rs 100 crore mark in India. We aspire to create a purposeful brand and Bewakoof serves the purpose of adding light-heartedness to people’s lives.
What is the story behind the name Bewakoof?
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Bewakoof has a unique ‘hatke’ way of looking at the world. Think of Bewakoof as the love child of Rajkumar Hirani and MTV Networks! It doesn’t mean idiot, literally. Bewakoof is almost like Aamir Khan of 3 Idiots. We are fun, playful and thoughtful. ‘Light-heartedness shall make the world a happier place’ is the motto we live by. We take our products and work and customers very seriously. But like Hyderabadis say, ‘Light lene ka’! Don't take your own self too seriously. The idea of Bewakoof is to add fun to the mundane and owning up your craziness. No other name could have done better justice to our purpose of adding light-heartedness. We are a fashion and lifestyle brand for the millennials and GenZ.
Tell us about the e-commerce platform ‘Curated Expressions Marketplace' that you have launched recently. What differentiates it from the rest in a crowded e-commerce marketplace?
We have launched a curated marketplace welcoming fun, expressive and unique brands like ourselves. We have signed up over 150 brands like Mad over Print, Brown Mocha, Fugazee, Peri Pai, Fighting Fame, Urban Estilo, HueTrap, Style Quotient, Dilinger, Smugglerz, Clovia, Noise, Boat, Campus Sutra, Ustraa, Difference of Opinion and many more. Bewakoof aims to generate Rs 500 crore in brand sales from the marketplace in the next 12 months. The marketplace is live with the fashion, innerwear, personal audio, beauty and accessories categories. We plan to launch home decor in FY22.
We are partnering with other goofy ‘hatke’ brands to be our ‘humsafar’ with the objective of offering our end consumers deep access to curated fun expressive brand options across fashion, home, accessories and beauty. Our aim is to become India’s biggest platform for creative merchandise. The D2C wave is birthing – there are lots of very interesting alternative exciting brands, but they don’t necessarily get relevant visibility or are presented in the right ambience. Regular marketplaces are very algorithmic price-driven generics. Our focus is on brands that speak to consumers’ hearts and are niche-focused on meeting unmet but important gaps in the market.
How far has your credo of fun and partnering ‘goofy hatke brands to offer curated fun, expressive brand options’ found resonance?
The idea behind creating a curated marketplace came from the fact that Bewakoof as a brand stands for ‘hatke’ products which are expressive, unique and believe in not taking things too seriously. Bewakoof aims to create a marketplace for brands with similar ethos who want to get discovered by a customer base that has a point of view on things and doesn't shy away from sharing it with the world. Some of the top performing expressive brands on the marketplace currently are Mad Over Print, Brown Mocha, Fugazee, Peri Pai, Fighting Fame, Urban Estilo, etc. The company plans to curate over 500 such brands on the marketplace in the next 12 months.
How did Bewakoof fare in FY 21-22? How do you strategise the marketing communication?
Bewakoof is adopting a multi-pronged growth strategy and multiple levers - adding depth to current categories, adding new categories like innerwear, sportswear, footwear, beauty, etc., taking the brand volume up many notches by making Bewakoof’s presence very serious on marketplaces like Amazon, Tata Cliq, Myntra and Flipkart. Our brand sales are currently at Rs 300 crore and we aim to touch Rs 2,000 crore in revenues by FY26.
What have you set out to do with Bewakoof in the long term? What are your focus areas and targets?
We want to become India’s largest D2C fashion and lifestyle brand. A brand that is not just aspirational for the young masses, but also inspirational. Our focus areas remain product expansion, technology and content.
