Know how these two brothers left their 9 to 5 jobs to start a Rs 100 crore company

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Know how these two brothers left their 9 to 5 jobs to start a Rs 100 crore company
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Ideas can come to you at anytime. At least for these two brothers, who met their cousins during holidays and ended up with a company of their own. Meet the ex-corporate guys Alok Agarwal and Atul Agarwal, who quit their 9 to 5 jobs to start their own company called Teesort, an online men’s fashion portal.

“Our cousins would visit us and found our clothes really fashionable. That’s when we realized that there is a huge gap in tier 2 and tier 3 cities across the country and we wanted to address this issue. We did our research and found a lack of affordable and stylish fashion for men in these cities,” says Alok Agarwal, founder and CEO of Teesort.

He adds, “Digital was a medium that could reach every one quickly and help solve the problem of affordable and trendy fashion.” And that’s when Alok quit his finance job in Airtel while Atul left his high-flying job with TCS and started Teesort together.

The company started with T-shirts, which is the largest category amongst their core target audience. Agarwal recalls that since their core target audience belonged to the smaller cities and towns, hence, they ensured that the consumers found value for money in their purchases. “These guys liked our designs and also felt that the prices were reasonable,” he notes.

Soon the demand rose and the brand ventured into other men’s fashion products such as formals and accessories. The company clocked in Rs 100 crore in 2015. But what really made them so profitable in such less time?
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Alok says that they have passed on the entire benefit of being an online only retail store to our consumers, which has worked in their favour. Being the techie of the two, younger brother and co-founder Atul developed software that helped the company calculate the demand and accordingly manufacture.

“We applied technology efficiently. We developed a software that tells us during the launch of a product, how many pieces of the product to produce to sell within 30 days. The biggest trouble in the fashion industry is the inventory. We may produce 100 pieces while the demand might be for 500 or vice versa. Our software has shown 95% accuracy, on the data pulled out. 95% of the times the software lets us know how many pieces of products would be sold in how many days,” he says.

He further adds, “The software helps release capital for Teesort and ensures there is no dead-stock. This has resulted in inventory turnover being good, which enables us to invest the same money into newer designs and newer models. We have been able to sell through our products and get new products, which keeps our customers engaged. Fashion is a dynamic industry. Applying technology into a traditional business model was something that worked really well for us.”

Bootstrapped with just a meager savings, the company now aims to expand in international markets. The company has tied up with Amazon to deliver their products in the US while it has tied up with a logistics company in the Middle East as well. The company now aims to clock in Rs 200 crore in 2016 and has a target of reaching Rs 500 crore by 2020.