Ethnic Wear Brand House Of Chikankari Secures ₹25 Crore In Series A

追加: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]It's contemporary ethnic wear brand House of Chikankari has raised 25 crore rupees in series A funding led by Cap Alpha Ventures as it looks to deepen its Omni Channel presence, expand internationally, and strengthen its artisan led supply chain. Founded in 2020, the company is reimagining traditional Chikankari for the modern consumer blending heritage embroidery with everyday fashion. Today, the brand works with over 10,000 women artisans, serves customers across 20 countries, and is operating at an annual revenue run rate of 50 crore rupees. Joining me now is Akriti Rawat, the founder of House of Chikankari. Also with me, my colleague Ritu. Akriti, welcome to Startup Street. House of Chikankari has grown over 50% in FY26 and is already operating at 50 crore rupees like I mentioned in ARR. What's driving this growth? Is it the shift towards everyday ethnic wear, stronger online demand, or consumers looking for more craft led fashion?

[00:00:55]Thank you for having me. And yes, so I think it's a mix of everything, honestly. I think it's digital adoption that's been increasing over the last few years. It's a changing consumer, you know, taste towards more craft led fashion. It's also more need for everyday ethnic wear. And I feel what House of Chikankari has managed to do, make Chikankari not just something which is about occasion wear, but kind of bringing the craft back into your everyday life, something you can, you know, lounge around in, you can wear it to work, you can wear it in your daily life. And I feel that we've also managed to build a strong trust online through, you know, our storytelling and through our quality, which has led to high repeat rates for us. So, you know, which goes in line with what the consumers are also looking for today, which is a brand which is all about authenticity and cultural depth and not just something, you know, someone a brand that's chasing trends.

[00:01:52]Akriti, hi. This is Ritu, and let me tell you, I'm from Lucknow, a big fan of Chikankari. You know, the business that you're building and I've been to talk.

[00:02:00]I've seen the artisans work.

[00:02:02]You're working with more than 10,000 of them across India, but you know, scaling this kind of a business what have been the challenges you've seen in a market that is so unorganized? I mean, you know, sourcing, inventory management, trend cycles, you know, where are you seeing bottlenecks?

[00:02:19]So, honestly, exactly what you said, the reason why, you know, we saw the gap and we entered 5 years back is we saw that it was so largely unorganized, but it's also one of the most beautiful art forms that, you know, I've ever come across.

[00:02:31]My mom's been always she's my co-founder and she's been involved in hand embroidery art forms since, you know, out of passion. So, that's exactly the challenge we went out to solve. Well, that being said, like the supply chain is far more complex than a conventional fashion brand. Every piece has multiple hands or multiple skilled artisans, you know, that work on it and there are much longer production cycles. At the same time, I feel like, you know, fashion requires you to move really fast. So, it's been a very complex supply chain cycle that we have worked on and I think we managed to kind of work on it with ground level work. It's happened over, you know, a period of time. It didn't happen on day one, but yes, you know, managing that quality at scale and making sure that quality stays consistent with the scale has been a a big challenge for us in the early years, but the opportunity also lies there because I feel not a lot of people have tried to fix it on ground level. So, we see a big opportunity there as well.

[00:03:30]All right, Akriti, a majority of your revenues come through your own website and app which see over 9 lakh monthly sessions. In a market again dominated by marketplaces, how important has building a strong D2C channel been for margins, customer loyalty, and brand control?

[00:03:45]I think extremely important and our own website and app, we have so much direct uh feedback and direct data. We have such PIN code level uh you know insights about what where our customer exactly is, what they want, what a customer sitting in Maharashtra versus a customer sitting in US, you know, wants. Uh that helps us bring better products. That help helps us better manage our inventory.

[00:04:09]Uh obviously margins are much better because we control the experience. Uh there's long-term loyalty that we see and you know we control the whole brand experience around what we're trying to create. And uh we also feel that as we venture into like more channels, this data comes into handy and helps us take better decisions. So it's been really really you know uh useful for us to have uh our own proprietary channels as one of the majority revenue driver for us.

[00:04:34]And I feel in a category like ethnic wear where trust and fit matter deeply, owning the customer uh relationship becomes a huge advantage.

[00:04:44]Well, that's the D2C angle, Akriti, but what about offline presence? I mean, at the end of the day for craft, you'd probably want some touch and feel as well. How many stores across what cities have you planned?

[00:04:56]So uh we do get a lot of our customers, you know, messaging us and requesting us to tell them when our stores are launching. It's something that we're definitely uh looking forward to as the next leg of uh you know expansion. They want to touch and experience the craft like you said, especially because the embroidery I feel when you see it in real life versus when you see online, there's so much difference and I feel offline just uh uh you know makes that experience much better, especially in the craft space. So we're looking at obviously, you know, some retail expansion over the next few years a- across key metros, some of you know high-intent markets, some places where our audience already exists. And uh that would also help us strengthen our online business. So we're looking with like right now working on looking at some PIN code level data from our own uh you know uh online data and figure out where we want to open our first few stores and then eventually plan our full logistics strategy strategy from there on.

[00:05:48]All right, Akriti, let's talk about international demand. That also seems to be picking up with shipments going to what are the 20 countries. How big is this opportunity really among global Indian consumers? Also, let's talk about monetization and growth levers. If you could take us through your revenue growth targets and expansion plans.

[00:06:07]So, international opportunity, I think India to global is extremely really big right now. And especially, I feel like earlier people used to depend on like, you know, marketplaces that worked internationally or export. But today, I think from your own website, you can have the advantage of doing it from anywhere in the world from your own warehouse. We you know, international has been an important you know, component for us as well. Like more than 20% of our sales are still coming directly from our website. We're shipping to 20 plus countries. And I think we've realized that because craft as in Indian craft today is being viewed not just as ethnic fashion. It's being viewed as a premium handmade product globally. There are multiple, you know, Western brands that come and talk about our craft and we don't get enough credit for it. So, I think it's time that people, you know, from our country made in India and especially the craft led brands take the Indian textiles, take the Indian handicrafts to the global audience where I think there is a lot of love already that exists. We just, you know, need to figure out a way to reach them. And talking about the growth as well, you know, some of the we are you know, looking at two to three times growth from here in the next two to three years where of course the key levers for the growth are going to be our channel expansion mostly in the offline space, you know, more on our loyalty, our repeat customers, and more categories, also deepening the international markets. Got that Akriti. Akriti