Technology and its integration have become extremely important today. We met Vikash Rajpurohit, Founder of Vastra App to understand more about the problems with the textile industry and how his application has made a big difference as a solution provider. Vastra is today a well-recognized brand which has won grants and accolades from IIM Ahmedabad and Vibrant Gujarat Summit. Let’s see what they have in store to digitalize the future of textile business.

Excerpts from the Interview

Tell us more about Vastra and how you started? What made you think to integrate the whole textile business into a mobile application?

It all started with my technical experience in information technology with post-graduation in this field. Prior to the start of my own business; I had working experience with start-up companies like Petpooja and CricHeros. Here, I worked as a developer and moved on to being a product manager. My understanding of business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to- business (B2B) concepts and knowledge was gained by working in these companies.

Moving ahead, to give you an example of a daily chapter in my social life in Ahmedabad where my frequent interaction was with people who are mostly in textiles and their routine talks were about the issues they are facing with their business. Frankly, the problem was in front of me and nobody had addressed their management issues and they were looking upon me as a technical person to provide some digital solution. Till this time, I had a well settled job but at the same time was inquisitive to work and solve the issues of the textile industry. This is where my actual journey started.

The first step was to get the hypothesis of the problem; which was researched after my visits to the market and practically did close to 150 survey interviews. Here, I met both the manufacturer and their workers and started understanding the problem and its root cause. The textile market in Ahmedabad was divided into communities and each one followed their own business practices. But one thing was common in them; which was the whole chain of manufacturing from raw material to the finished product. We started working to provide the best solution to this manufacturer with a mobile app based technology. This could bring all business processes on one platform. We were targeting the actual operations team and a young leader who could connect to the use of our technology without hesitation. The new generation is taking over and they understand the best use of our technology.

With the launch of our management application, our first focus was the business operations in textiles other than accounting. We started defining our user persona, who is a person generating his business over whatsApp. We started with the company name as ‘Job Card’. This was defining the work flow process and solutions for the textile worker. Once we realized we are going in the right direction, we rebranded our company as ‘Vastra’ to digitalize the whole textile chain. We were recognized by IIM Ahmedabad and were given grant money, with which we established ourselves and registered Vastra in June 2018. We quickly became famous in the market for our digital efforts. The manufacturer had trust on us as to whatever manual work they are doing; the Vastra team can digitalize that. We are a customer - centric company where the problem was identified by our customers and we gave them its solutions. In November 2018, we again received a grant during Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit from the hands of Nitinbhai Patel (Ex. Deputy Chief Minister, Gujarat) and from here there was no looking back for our brand.

How do you define you customer base? 

Our mobile application is being used by some 3000 plus manufacturers. Our key markets are Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Delhi, Indore, Jaipur, Ludhiana and Kolkata. We have a team of 60 plus team members dedicatedly working for Vastra. We are uniquely positioned in the market and our customers are manufacturers who have a revenue from 2 to 50 Crore.

Tell us about Vastra in a simple way- about its features and what are the problems it can solve and benefits to the customer?

The textiles business is based on some pillars i.e. designing: these are manufacturers who are the trend creators. They first develop the concept and then outsource its manufacturing and once it’s ready, marketing comes into play and is sold to the retailer. Now, in this whole business process, the first process that comes is accounting, then is designing and its bulk production with new concepts, and last but not the least comes the inventory management and planning its order and delivery system. Today, Vastra is providing an end- to- end solution to these workflows. We are the assistants to the business owners.

How do you define your vision?

Our company’s vision is to clearly give business clarity and better visibility to a textile owner. Vastra gives our customers a 360 degree report on his order, his production and inventory on his mobile. Our application gives hands on features to our subscribers like ‘design based work flow’, stock, work in progress (WIP) and report on raw material. Our app has benefited the textile manufacturers as they have been able to increase their production capacity by at least 40 percent. With the use of our application; a textile owner is able to reduce the opportunity losses of demand and supply. We have integrated all the solutions that are needed by a textile owner with an accounting system- Tally. So, Vastra has got its full potential to automate your business.

Do you provide your application through subscription based model?

We provide services which are subscription based and provide packages which are from Rs 15000/- to Rs 20000/- that can automate your entire business for a year.

Number of subscribers and expansion plans?

We have 3000 listed manufacturers and their connected end- to - end users are 50,000 and we have a 75 percent renewal rate. We have a month on month organic onboarding process of 150 manufacturers monthly and wish to take this number to 500. There are twelve textile hubs in India and we will be able to onboard some 15000 more customers in the next two years.

In the near future, we are also targeting to build a network of manufacturers, karigars and the end retailers. This all will be on board through other technologies with us and will solve their pain points. In short; in the coming days, we will ultimately become a discovery platform for the industry.

Tell us about the process management problems in textile manufacturing. Was this only identified by you or you have competitors?

Our industry runs on credit system, where the manufacturers and the technology providers’ focus has only been on accounting. In earlier days, a fashion trend used to have a market life for at least 8 months with small changes. But today, it’s fast fashion. Every day the consumers want something new and the trend changes quite rapidly. Now, to handle this manually was not possible. The companies needed a solution which could digitalize the overall design based work flow process.  We actually were able to give this solution in our meaningful app ‘Vastra’ which integrated it with the accounting software.

How comfortable is your technology and its adaption?

Our customers first have to identity only one pain point in their manufacturing cycle and we solve it. This takes around a week. We provide one- on- one service where our team will assist in uploading the designs and solve the issue. We will also train you and your team to adopt our technology that will automate your business.

Summing up our interview, where do you see Vastra- 5 years from now?

Our average growth has been 100 percent every year. We wish to build a genuine business in this industry and we dream to even come out with our initial public offering (IPO).