The flight of stairs and the corridor leading to Anagha have gone through a creative overhaul. When one of her regular customers told Sarvamangala, the founder, that the bare pathway could do with some vibrancy, she gave it a thought. The wall along the stairs are now adorned with kalamkari wall hangings, blocks used by artisans for printing, and a Ganesha door handle on a painting of a door that brightens up the landing. The store is celebrating its tenth anniversary and the entrepreneur behind it has seen it grow strength to strength.
Over the years, Sarvamangala has strived to bring in a mix of traditional and contemporary handloom textiles for urban women, and says it all started from a meeting with Uzramma of Dastkar Andhra, who’s now the director of Malkha Marketing Trust. “I hadn’t completed my graduation when I joined Indian Airlines as an air hostess. Later, when my family was looking to start a business I was on the lookout for something interesting,” she recalls.
First steps
Sarvamangala’s inherent interest in textiles was stoked when Uzramma showed her a direction. She met weavers and felt there could be a beginning. Sarvamangala started the venture with a loan of ₹ 5 lakh from her father. This was in 1994. Back then, stores in Hyderabad were retailing silk and cotton weaves but there was room for something edgy — like combining traditional saris with contemporary blouses, accessorising with terracotta jewellery or draping the saris differently.
“I learnt on the job,” says Sarvamangala. The family’s store came up in Secunderabad and later, Sarvamangala established Anagha in the lane near Banjara Hills Post Office, much before GVK One opened its doors. “At that time, not many were familiar with the post office and I had to give directions. The mall made it easier,” she laughs. Four years ago, she had to move and chose the current location, beside Tarun Tahiliani store near Iranian Consulate. The clientèle stuck to her as she moved addresses.
She calls it a 24X7 job. There’s competition from the steadily growing online retailers as well as other speciality stores. “Every lane has a boutique today, so you have to be on top of the game to survive,” she says. Anagha ships to other cities and countries as well for orders placed through social media pages. Plans are on to launch an e-commerce portal soon. “An online store never sleeps. So you need a dedicated team,” Sarvamangala mentions.
While she feels the need to strengthen the online presence, she notes that shopping online doesn’t match the joy of visiting a real store. The fun part of the business is ideating with weavers and designers to experiment with a mix of techniques – ikat and kalamkari, ikat and mangalagiri and other combinations, for the blouses that have become Anagha’s USP. If a youngster walking into the store is unsure of how a sari would look on her, Sarvamangala offers suggestions — a sari teamed with a crop top does the trick sometimes.
Sharpening skills
Sarvamangala had enrolled in the ‘10,000 Women’ certification programme for entrepreneurs at the Indian School of Business in 2009. She equates the learning from the programme to “giving spectacles to someone with myopic vision. I was already handling the business and advertising, but it helped to streamline things, identify short term and long term goals and work towards them. The crash course helped me understand finance better.” Sarvamangala works with 25 to 30 weavers in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jaipur, West Bengal, Karnataka and Gujarat.
In 2009 September, she felt the need to expand the brand and opened a store in Vikrampuri, only to shut it down in December 2010. “There were several issues and we weren’t able to make the cut,” she reasons.
Again, in 2014, she began Saran, an offshoot of Anagha to stock silk saris and garments — maxi dresses, skirts and tops, kurtas, palazzos and more. “I had always wanted a store on the main road and since this space came up next to my existing store, I took it up,” she says. Saran is now called Anagha Annexe, keeping with GST rules on propriety business. There’s been addition in kidswear, with skin-friendly fabrics catering to one and two year olds.
Meanwhile, a group of women browsing through the collection are engaging in a discussion on handlooms and Sarvamangala signs off, “I find more women patronising handlooms today. They know to identify the weave and the region it comes from.”
