February 2016 Woman At Work Digital

SIMPLY SUCCESSFUL
found herself creating beautiful
apparels for herself. A carefree
childhood filled with lot of
outdoor activities gave Kavita a
chance to explore many talents.
While an expert in all forms of
art, she is also an ace swimmer
and a tennis player. “If I had not
gravitated to being a designer, I
would have probably been
playing tennis,” says Kavita, with
a bountiful smile.
An alumnus of NIFT
Bangalore, Kavita has trained
under John Lewis in UK, worked
on bespoke products, designer
patterns, and state of the art
sewing machines. The talented
Kavita along with her two
colleagues was featured on the
cover page of the John Lewis
Magazine ‘Chronicle’ for their
creative work on the Easter
theme. The two year stint in UK
was one of the most professionally
enriching periods for her. She
also pursued a retail course while
at UK. “It is the learnings that I
got during my stint there coupled
with an innate sense of business
and art which has helped me
setup my own enterprise,”
explains the bags expert based
out of Banaglore. What started
as a hobby in her childhood, took
the shape of a successful venture
and for Kavita, it was a dream
come true. “The bags that I made
for myself received tremendous
appreciation wherever I carried
them and that is when my
husband suggested I embark on
an exercise to create hundred
bags and track market response,”
she says recollecting the trigger
to her foray into this field. And
the rest, as they say is history.
One after the other, orders started
pouring in. As the demand
increased so did her range.
Kavita has a huge
catalogue of bags like totes,
laptop bags, watch cases, piggy
banks made of felt, children’s
backpacks, shoe bags, laundry,
and theme based bags for kids.
She has myriad other knickknacks
like hair accessories for
little girls, candies packaged
beautifully in butterfly-shaped
packs, toy-storage bags etc.
The Cherie Blair
Foundation of UK, has selected
Kavita among one of the 27
Indian entrepreneurs for doing
innovative work while pursuing
their passion. The foundation
provides mentors to the budding
women entrepreneurs like
Kavita to help them become
better at their business and meet
their long term and short term
professional goals. Kavita
underwent rigorous selection
criteria before being chosen by
the prestigious foundation. She
has been awarded with a mentor
who is a senior business leader
from Africa.
The initial investment was
not much and most of it was
done by her husband, Mayank,
who is the biggest propeller
behind giving life to her talent.
The high in demand handcrafted
handbags are usually sold on
social media platforms or
exhibitions and word of mouth.
The business runs on minimal
overheads, with no excess
inventory, as the bags are
always made on demand. The
usual suspects which incur
expenses are the raw material,
transportation, labour and
power. Taking the business to
the next level and handling
excess demand, Kavita employs
contractual labour to stitch the
bags, but handwork i.e. the
needle and thread effect is
always done in-house by the
designer herself. Her every
creation has a story to tell, and
Kavita enhances the emotional
and visual appeal of the bags by
adding her touch of finesse and
style by the creative
manoeuvring of the needle. On
publicity and promotion, her
needle and thread leave a trail in
the customer’s mind, thus her
art does its job of reaching
places.
The one woman army,
Kavita puts her heart into every
piece she creates. She believes
she has two other partners and
a few stakeholders in her
business. “My twins, a boy and
a girl of five years are my
partners. They are my fountain
head of creativity.” She recalls
how the children were her
inspiration behind one of the
aeroplane theme based bag she
created for kids. Her husband
and her parents fill in whenever
she needs them. Their stake is in
the form of faith and support.
Kavita reminisces herself as
an ambitious girl who wanted to
make a mark for herself.
Motherhood does lovely things
to people, just like it did to her
when she had her twins. She
then channelled her ambition
into her venture where she
could pursue her dreams and
also enjoy their childhood. Her
kids help her ideate and test
her bags for strength and
detailing. “A lot of times, I have
created a bag and made my
kids use it to understand the
detailing and utility angle
before putting it up for sale,”
says the proud mother.
Kavita is a sum of passion,
dedication, creativity and
needle doodling. “My soul
is fed with needle and thread,”
says the needle woman.
30
| February 2016