Reviving a love for sarees

Mrinalini Shastry, an entrepreneur, a development professional for over 16 years takes up a startup journey four years ago namely Six Yards Plus, which explicate saree draping as one journey and also encourages young women to opt for sarees as garment of choice."Six yards is the length of the regular Saree, we started this because we want to do everything around the sarees, we wanted to change the way that people perceive, consume and experience sarees, and we are all about the saree."

In acknowledging why everything around sarees, she adds that there are few barriers for people to wear sarees such as knowledge of purchasing it, accompanying any person to buy one or choosing only for special occasions and to undo these the brand asks customers to own their saree first.

The saree store also explores on the concept of seamlessly picking up garments and introduces a concept called saree surprise where in we have to fill a questionnaire and wait for surprise to be drape ready.

The founder notices that this era clientele also look for who are they buying products from and mostly have queries regarding what impact does it make on environment and to respond to all of it she creates an authentic brand which guarantees everybody if it is silk, it is silk, telling you upfront to make saree draping authentic effortless and fun.

Passionate about everything to do with sarees and handlooms, she elucidates that sarees last for generations and interest for sarees in general is on demand and people also look for small cluster weavers, unheard-of weaves, demand for craft-based sarees, younger age group ask for manufacturing process. On asking how challenging it is to be an entrepreneur she says, "The understanding of different kinds of weaves is evolving, Firstly I believe in my product deeply and that would give me the passion to be able to convey to my cliental then you build loyal cliental" Suggesting other women entrepreneurs,a mantra she says that one must believe in their own product or service they are offering which would do more convincing job in finding their own tribe because she is content in draping every saree in her store and would do a bad job trying to sale a one lakh worth saree because that does not resonate with her values. With over eight staff the four year old brand has grown six times and believes to make the garment a part of women's daily life.