William Nanda Bissell, MD, Fabindia, is keen on going aggressive on omni-channel retail and plans to expand its international operations
Synonymous with ethnic wear in the country, Fabindia has found the formula that balances social impact with scale
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Bengaluru-based impact investor Nagaraja Prakasam believes that the most defining facet of Fabindia’s success has been its “cult-like customers” that proudly wear the brand to “celebrate India”. He adds, “My children go to The Valley School [founded by philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and located on the outskirts of Bengaluru] where there is no uniform, but Fabindia is the unofficial uniform most of the days.”
As an angel investor in GoCoop, which is a marketplace for handloom cooperatives, Prakasam has tracked and studied the sector closely. “As it happens in any sector, the person at the top of the food chain tends to squeeze the person below. While ‘celebrating India’ has been achieved, whether artisans are celebrating is doubtful. Also, I don’t see much of handloom [mark on their products], which excludes around 8 million weavers in its story,” he says.
This points to the age-old question: How do you measure social impact and ensure that profitability is not the focus? L Catterton Asia’s Narayanan believes that the question itself is a false dichotomy. “I can make anything look horrific by saying you are pillaging from the artisans or you’re taking away from what is truly theirs,” he says. “More people are invited into the fold of artisanship because Fabindia has scaled as an enterprise. For every Rs 500 crore more that Fabindia gets in revenue, many more artisans get work.”
Retail veteran Viney Singh joined Fabindia as its CEO in August 2016. Singh was formerly with Max Hypermarkets and was responsible for building the Spar hypermarket brand in the country. “The social dimension of the company where you have a strong social link to the business, I have to confess, has a tremendous feel-good factor,” says Singh. He has the task of taking Fabindia to the level of growth laid out in the company’s Vision Plan 5. The challenge in that is, he says, “How do you grow this equity that has been built over all these years, strengthen the craft connect, and scale the business?”
Read the full article here…PUBLISHED: Jan 17, 2017 06:28:28 AM IST