Designing Comfort: Riddhi Jain

As a BBA graduate when New Delhi -based Riddhi Jain launched NeceSera, it was with an intent to create high-quality range of comfortable loungewear that can be worn at home, while sleeping, lounging and even traveling. NeceSera offers the best of the two most important aspects of loungewear fabric and designs. Today, it is successfully growing and is counted amongst the best of environment friendly fashion.

Riddhi Jain talks about how the brand emerged to be unique in the loungewear segment.

Being a BBA student what interested you to start NeceSera?
I graduated from Emory University in the US with a BBA degree. After returning to India I decided to get into loungewear because it’s a wardrobe essential for every woman regardless of age and time of the year. After researching the apparel industry, I noticed that even though we spend most of our time in loungewear, there’s a huge gap for high-quality comfortable clothing in the Indian market.

While there are numerous fashion brands, what we really need is everyday classics, to change into after work, for sleeping and when you just want to unwind. So I launched NeceSera, for every time you need to take a break, relax and just be yourself. This is the reason we focus so much on bringing you the coziest fabrics for the ultimate comfort.

You had shared; The loungewear was an idea transformed after long trips. Tell us something about these trips.
I’ve always been very fond of art and photography. I wanted to bring this artsy aesthetic into our loungewear designs. When I started NeceSera, I knew I wanted two things, highest quality fabrics and out of the box designing. So I put together my abstract photography from various trips, pictures of art, and even things like mosaic tiles to create the first mood board. Our creative director and designers have their own ideas which keep our mood boards new and exciting every season.

It has just been a year since NeceSera started. How has the brand evolved?
My initial idea was to do quirky nightwear. Our focus is on fabrics and unique design strategies. This lead us to the path of loungewear, which is essentially comfortable clothing and includes basics styles as well as our quirky European print designs for nightwear.
Apart from that, we considerably changed our sale avenues from pop-up shops to focusing more on online selling.

How has it been to be a young entrepreneur working on a new concept - How was the learning experience?
My journey has been incredible. At work, I’m in my happy place! As an entrepreneur, you’re constantly learning. My learning curve has been slightly steeper than usual because I started soon after completing my graduation. Whether it’s perfecting basic management techniques, implementing six-sigma in production or to budget expenses right, I’ve learned everything at work. It’s this learning that keeps the journey exciting and the brand going.

What have been the challenges of working in your own business as a woman?
I started NeceSera when I was 22, and it was definitely a challenge to make people believe in me initially. Whether you’re a male or a female, unless you’re sure about yourself, this will always be a challenge. But if you’re sure about where you want to reach and your goals, it becomes easier to overcome challenges.

A major functional challenge I’ve faced is hiring the right people. Putting together a team of like-minded passionate individuals is difficult because in a start-up when you can only hire limited resources, you need individuals who’ll have to work twice as hard. We try to strike a balance by hiring young minds with new ideas as well as a few experienced individuals with tried and tested methods.

Tell us about the environmental friendly techniques used to design the loungewear?
On an average, it takes 2,700 liters of water to make one t-shirt in processes like dying, washing etc. At NeceSera’s in-house manufacturing unit, we have set up a water recycling plant that recycles 70 percent of the water.

Secondly, we use digital printing, which, as compared to regular printing has much lesser chemical discharge, lesser water consumption and lesser wastage overall. Even though this is costlier, it helps us minimize our carbon footprint and also provides our customers better quality products.

Apart from loungewear are you planning to design casual wear for women?
We are currently focusing on expanding our loungewear collection, while we only started with nightwear; we’re expanding to home wear and comfortable basics that can be worn casually outside the home as well. All of our products aim at providing women a comfort zone so that they are comfortable in all their daily activities.