Four friends from Cauvery College for Women have got together to create an enterprise that allows them to indulge in not just their passion for creativity and marketing, but also to create awareness about the importance of recycling available resources.
Commerce stream undergraduates Shrinidhi Umanathan, Krithika J, Gulshiyaa Begam (all in third year) and Gnana Malika (first year), have successfully launched a small interior decoration business in Tiruchi, which uses leftover fabric from local tailors and surplus stock from designer stores to create new home furnishings. The initiative recently won them ₹50,000 at a start-up festival organised by St Joseph’s Institute of Management (JIM), Tiruchi.
“We wanted to use education for the betterment of society,” says Shrinidhi, who provided the main impetus to the group. As members of their college’s Entrepreneur Development Cell (EDC), the young women are brimming with enthusiasm on how to take their ideas forward.
What makes their enterprise unique is its emphasis on inclusivity: the group has trained four persons with disability in tailoring and craftwork for their orders, and also employs Lakshmi, a transgender woodworker who is a good friend of Shrinidhi’s.
“We actually lost some clients because of our insistence on using Lakshmi to do the measurements in every project,” says Shrinidhi. “But we persevered, and once she gained acceptance, positive feedback from clients is helping us get more offers.”
Cloth hunting
Shrinidhi, who once aspired to become a dress designer before she decided to pursue Commerce, has already tested some of her innovative ideas in the local market.
“I was inspired to see how persons with disability are able to learn new skills through occupational therapy, especially using cloth waste. When I was in school, to earn pocket money, I would take the doormats, pillow covers and thread jewellery made by persons with disability and sell them in the Rock Fort area. This is when I realised that they could be trained to do commercial work in specially adapted circumstances,” she says.
With the help of online research, she decided to train four persons with disability to use the sewing machine in a new method that would allow them to complete projects in a shorter period of time. “Their main challenge is that they cannot sit in one place for more than half an hour, so we ensure that the work is done on rotation, under the supervision of an expert,” says Shrinidhi.
She had yet another ingenious idea to collect the fabric. “I approached 6-7 tailors for the swatches of leftover cloth that used to fill the workshops, and offered to clear it out for them. Since I was essentially removing their waste, they paid me for my services,” smiles Shrinidhi. When the interiors business took off, she approached big clothing retailers for their unsold stock as well. “We also attended the auctions of defective clothing held at Gandhi Market by designer brands, to build up our textile reserves,” she says.
Starting small
Since they started late last year, the group has done the interiors of three local residences, and has now entered into a partnership with a city entrepreneur for contractual work.
Says Gulshiyaa, who has done a certificate course in interior design, “Our biggest problem was in getting people to agree to have repurposed cloth furnishings in their homes. We are not interested in used cloth; instead we are trying to maximise the usage of new fabrics that would otherwise have to be destroyed by sellers.”
The group is now hoping to customise discarded automobile fixtures like tyres and seats as quirky bespoke home furniture.
Their own college has approached them to suggest how the classroom interiors can be redecorated. While Shrindhi, Krithika and Gulshiyaa take care of the designing, Gnana Malika is in charge of marketing and creating brand awareness through social media.
The modus operandi has been pretty simple until now. “After Lakshmi gets the measurements, we discuss the items to be readied for our client, and then delegate the tailoring work to our mothers,” says Krithika. “When our studies are over for the day, we follow up on orders and see that we stick to our delivery schedule.”
Future plans
Currently spending next to nothing on advertising, the recent victory at the JIM festival has proven to be their best publicity. “We actually landed a deal to supply reusable linen like tablecloths and napkins for an event management company at the festival, even though we had gone as contestants,” says Krithika.
“We are going to invest the prize money in our next phase. We will require more projects to grow, especially once we start dealing with aspects like cabinetry,” says Shrinidhi. “We’d like to get Lakshmi trained in carpentry.”
These young women clearly have some savvy designs on their future.
