Becoming a T-shirt entrepreneur is now a breeze, thanks to platforms like Freecultr and Jack of all Threads. Voxpop, funded by Blume Ventures, currently works with small independent T-shirt brands, but is planning to throw open the platform to the public soon.
In these open platforms, all one needs to do is submit photos/graphics and words/messages, and create a page of all your T-shirt designs. The moment somebody orders a T-shirt, the platform will print it and deliver to the customer. The platform will take the cost of the T-shirt, plus a margin for itself, and give you the rest. Almost no hassle for the entrepreneur. You just need to be creative with your messaging and illustrations. Words and messages constitute about 50% of the T-shirt designs, graphics and illustrations 30%, and photos 20%.
Sandeep Singh, co-founder and CEO of the Gurgaon-based Freecultr, says there is no curation by the platform. "Most sellers have their own Facebook pages to market themselves," he says. The technology even lets sellers submit mobile camera pictures as designs. Freecultr sells 1 lakh T-shirts every month.
Bengaluru-based Jack of all Threads, founded by four 20-something people, has seen its business grow by 20 times in less than six months. It says it has 1 lakh registered users, and gets a million hits a month. "We wanted to be entrepreneurs, and we were ready to take the risk. We are democratizing entrepreneurship," says co-founder Yash Vardhan Kanoi.
Mumbai-based VoxPop started when Disney wanted to sell its T-shirts in India. Siddharth Taparia, who then headed Disney's merchandise division, decided to turn an entrepreneur and started VoxPop to sell Disney T-shirts, but soon went beyond that. The company sells 30,000 T-shirts a month.
"While being an open platform, we are differentiating ourselves by stitching together partnerships," says Taparia. Earlier this month, VoxPop tied up with Threadless, an international T-shirt designer marketplace, to bring more than four lakh designs to India.
?Freecultr, backed by venture capital firm Sequoia, has technology that helps it to print different designs for every single T-shirt in less than a day. The delivery is done all over India to the end consumer within five days. The company adds 300 designs every day and has a total of 40,000 T-shirts on the platform designed by around 7,000 photographers, artists, graphic designers and illustrators.
Singh of Freecultr says the venture is profitable. More than 30% of the designs are sold at least once on the platform. When one-and-half-year-old Angaar, a playful Malinois breed, cleared a series of explosive detection tests with flying colours last week, its Americans and Punjabi trainers at a 40-acre academy in Derabassi wore smiles of satisfaction. The dog belongs to an Indian multibillionaire and is the first alumnus of the International Tactical and Canine Training Centre (ITAC).
ITAC is a joint venture between the Punjab government and ESD, a firm started by Chandigarh-based entrepreneur Newton Sidhu. Thomas Piketty’s take on the subject is the boldest and the best. He said it like it is, when he pointed out that Germany has never repaid its debts! He asked, what gave Angela Merkel the right to lecture Greece, with a history of bad debt in her own country?
We, in India, have been in a similar situation ourselves. Yes, Greece is a defaulter. Yes, there is a major financial crisis in Greece. Yes, Greeks have to be more realistic and tighten their belts henceforth. Yes, Greece will have to revisit their absurd tax policies and pay up. Every nation has to deal with equally serious issues periodically. But in today’s media-driven times, perception counts for a lot. The reporting from and about Greece was horribly prejudiced and lopsided. I was aghast at some of the misrepresentation. This is downright unfair and mischievous! But the power of some Western networks is so overwhelming, global opinions are quickly formed based on what is being projected. This level of selective reportage is most damaging, besides being morally reprehensible. India has suffered on countless occasions because of biased, highly prejudiced coverage. While in Greece, we were repeatedly asked about the Nirbhaya case — most of the questions were sweeping judgements and generalizations. Nobody was interested in listening to more positive stories — especially about women who have courageously struggled against tremendous odds to make something of their lives.
While the Greeks sort out their mess, and we thrash around dealing with ours, perhaps a little empathy is not too much to ask for. When Greece was being baited and battered by more affluent EU partners, I thought of how we in India have never really had it good either. Every international move we make comes under intense scrutiny and is regarded with an exaggerated sense of suspicion. Our internal problems are indeed monumental (for starters, how about aggressively tackling the killing fields of Vyapam?). We hurtle from one scam to the next. Our notorious corruption is of epic proportion with no solution in sight. But, you know what? We can deal with our problems. Our informed and aware citizens can never be taken for granted. Governments can browbeat a few, even murder and maim innocents, but not even the most dictatorial government can subdue and tame over a billion people. A Greek tragedy has been successfully averted. The Greeks are a proud people. They believe in themselves, even if their leaders mess up the country. Ditto for Indians.