Our strong background in D2C & B2C gives us confidence to cater B2B efficiently
Jinaaya Textile Company is primarily a leading manufacturer of womenswear, based in Surat, India. With a rich legacy spanning over 40 years, the company has established itself as a trusted name in the industry, offering high-quality garments and exceptional service to the valued customers worldwide.
This enduring legacy is a testimony to Jinaaya Textile Company’s commitment to excellence and its ability to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of the fashion industry.
The company specialises in producing a diverse range of women’s clothing, including kurtis and tunics, kurta sets, suit sets, loungewear, and westernwear. Jinaaya Textile Company’s extensive collection is designed to cater to the varied tastes and preferences of modern women, blending traditional and contemporary styles seamlessly.
The company takes immense pride in its ability to stay on top of the latest fashion trends, ensuring that its customers always have access to the most stylish and up-to-date designs. By keeping a close eye on emerging trends and incorporating them into their collections, Jinaaya Textile Company ensures that it meets the changing demands of the fashion-conscious consumers.
One of the key differentiators of Jinaaya Textile Company is its firm commitment to providing customers with the best possible prices. By directly manufacturing garments, the company can offer them at factory rates, a significant advantage that translates into substantial cost savings for retail partners and home-based businesses. This strategic approach allows Jinaaya to provide its partners with excellent profit margins while enabling them to offer competitive prices to their customers in turn.
The company understands the critical importance of profitability in today’s fiercely competitive market, and its factory rates are designed to help partners maximise their returns without compromising on quality or the style.
At Jinaaya Textile Company, customer satisfaction is not just a priority but a core value that drives every aspect of the business. The company strives to provide a seamless experience for its customers, from the moment they engage with Jinaaya Textile Company to the delivery of their products.
To ensure that its products reach customers no matter where they are located, Jinaaya Textile Company offers worldwide shipping. This global reach is complemented by a dedicated customer service team that is always ready to assist, addressing queries or concerns promptly and efficiently.
Boasting over 2,000 designs, five lakh ready stock inventory, 48 hour dispatch time and more than 10,000 happy clients across geographical locations, Jinaaya Textile Company believes in building long-lasting relationships with its customers, and this commitment to exceptional service is reflected in the high level of customer satisfaction the company consistently achieves.
Fibre2Fashion had the opportunity to meet Aagam Jain, the director of Jinaaya Textile Company recently, at his Surat office for a candid discussion about the company’s vision and its strategies for navigating today’s challenging business landscape. During the discussion, Aagam shared insights into Jinaaya Textile Company’s journey, its current initiatives, its different verticals and business models, and the future direction of the company.
Can you share some insights about Jinaaya Textile Company? Is it your brainchild?
Actually, in our family, nothing is considered as one person’s creation or decision. This is a fundamental rule that we follow. My father and my uncle, when they were running the business, made sure that all decisions were taken collectively and since then it has been that way, always a family affair.
For us, business is not the priority; the family is! The notion is business exists for the family and not the other way around. You work to sustain the household but not let the business dictate your life.
We come from a very deeply rooted Jain family and hold strong beliefs in the teachings of the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. My father’s philosophy emphasises simple living and high thinking. His view is that you can engage in as much business as you want, but at the end of the day, you ought to return to your roots, lead a simple life and do what is necessary for your family.
Coming back to Jinaaya Textile Company’s genesis, in 2012, I moved to Surat after finishing my studies and after doing a couple odd jobs in Mumbai for a brief period. But before we started Jinaaya Textile Company, I began with manufacturing cartons, which was not a very profitable business back then because packaging was not seen as crucial. Now, its importance is more recognised.
We then embarked on a marketplace journey with four brands, and Jinaaya Textile Company was one of them.
Initially, we launched Vaamsi, a brand for sarees and dress materials, followed by Ahika, a ready-to-wear brand. Ahika is an online brand that designs unique, fashionable, and comfortable ethnicwear for women. The sole aim behind the emergence of the brand remains to make Indian ethnicwear more intriguing and easier to wear for the modern women of today.
From designing routine yet unique office looks to partywear, Ahika offers a wide range of contemporary designs at reasonable and affordable prices and the range includes crepe kurtas, cotton embroidery kurtas, kurta-palazzo sets, rayon kurtas, and a lot more.
As we progressed, we realised we were focusing only on D2C (direct to consumer) and not B2B (business to business). In December 2022, my brothers (Swapnil and Snehil) and I discussed over this issue. Considering our vast infrastructure including manufacturing facility and so on, we decided that it was time to explore the B2B space as well.
We had previously worked with a host of marketplaces and different business models, making us adaptable and flexible in our approach to each and every situation and business options.
Was your focus solely on D2C before this shift?
Yes, before this shift, our focus was on B2C (business to consumer) and D2C. Before 2009-2010, we were engaged in B2B also, but following the traditional Surat model. In this model, buyers would usually visit your company, review the product catalogues, place orders, and then collect the items.
However, payments were typically made 90 days after placing the order, and the cycle would also include handling returns after a prolonged period, which often became obsolete due to the fast-paced nature of the fashion industry. This outdated model was unsustainable, especially in the fast-paced fashion landscape that we operate in.
To avoid such challenges that my father and uncle have been facing, we established certain principles for Jinaaya Textile Company when transitioning to the B2B space. We aimed to offer customers a wide variety of curated products delivered directly to them without turning into a general store that sells everything, from handkerchiefs to bedsheets, to maintain our niche.
Our strong D2C and B2C background gave us the confidence in our ability to oversee B2B efficiently. We have adopted a flexible model where customers do not have to purchase complete sets from us. They can order in any quantities or sizes, customised products, and receive their orders within 48 hours.
For convenience, orders can also be placed via WhatsApp, video calls, our website, or through our CRM team; there is a complete flexibility on that aspect.
What’s more, with us, customers can start their business with as little as ₹10,000 and they also have the option to exchange the unsold products within a month for new ones including from the latest collections, making it even more convenient for anyone to start business in this domain.
You also have your own line of stores. Which all cities are you currently present in?
We are currently present in Kolkata, Surat (Vivaanta Fashion), and Jaipur. Our approach is not to rapidly expand with numerous stores but to ensure that each store is adequately supported.
Our goal now is to establish two more stores in Delhi and Bengaluru. However, we are taking our time to ensure our marketing is well-targeted and our inventory is sufficient before opening the new stores.
We leverage our strong B2C model to avoid issues with dead inventory, as any fresh inventory can be sold through multiple business models. We also offer customisation services, such as personalised labelling, which can be done within a day for orders of 2,000 pieces and above.
What are your thoughts on the competitive dynamics of being both a brand owner and a manufacturer for other brands in the same product categories?
Honestly speaking, I do not see this as a significant risk or challenge. Being from Surat gives us an edge because as you rightly said we are not just brand owners but also manufacturers.
Our approach is inclusive, aiming to do business with everyone, from end consumers to retailers, distributors, wholesalers, and even small home-based business.
We do not mind even if others copy our products because at the end of the day it will be challenging to match our price points due to our efficient manufacturing processes, let alone maintaining the quality parameters.
Our customisation options allow retailers to sell under their own labels, ensuring customer loyalty. We also offer easy returns and exchanges for unsold products, adding to the convenience of our customers.
Given all these benefits and our comprehensive and convenient service, I believe there should not be any issues between catering to different brands as a manufacturer while also successfully running our own brands, at the same time.
How do you manage to keep pace with the fast-changing landscape in the ethnicwear market?
Fashion trends, especially in ethnicwear, change rapidly due to impact of social media and also the rapidly changing consumer preferences. Earlier, fashion trends would change every few months, but now they evolve sort of on a daily basis. Thus, keeping pace with this change is a challenge not only for us but everybody else in the industry.
However, by anticipating future trends we try to stay ahead of the curve and ensure that we are always ready to meet the market demands. This gives us the leverage to prepare six months in advance for the upcoming seasons. For instance, we have already completed our collections for summer and spring and are now focusing on Diwali.
Our established D2C market presence and brand reputation give us confidence in our product offerings. We do not follow trends; rather we aim to set them. By creating a wide range of products and by capitalising our market understanding, we ensure that our collections are well-received by the end-customers.
How do you go about curating your collections to stay relevant and appealing?
To start with, the whole business process at Jinaaya Textile Company involves a distribution of responsibilities among us three brothers. The eldest (Swapnil) manages production and finances, the second brother (Snehil) handles product creation, curation, and pricing, while I oversee operations to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Snehil has a keen eye for market trends. He closely monitors designers, online trends, and products from various brands. He also travels to all the major cities to understand regional preferences and examines different fabrics and designs to ensure our products are both appealing and competitively priced.
Every day, I review around 20 spec sheets and CAD reports for new designs and each product goes through rigorous quality checks and modelling before being approved.
This meticulous process ensures that our products meet the market standards and customer expectations. Snehil’s expertise and our collaborative approach result in a high success rate for our offerings, with most of our products performing well in the market.
The ethnicwear market in India is evolving very fast and is also attracting many big names to add a new dimension. How do you plan to stay competitive in the given scenario?
In ethnicwear, the local touch or essence is very crucial. While big brands and multinationals may excel in westernwear, ethnicwear requires a deep understanding of the local tastes and preferences, which we have been able to develop over the years by virtue of being in this domain for so long. This local knowledge gives us an advantage over the multinational companies.
What’s more, when big brands enter the ethnicwear market, they often look towards collaborating with local companies for that local touch, localised products and we have the expertise and infrastructure to cater to their requirements. This helps us to maintain the relevance quotient in a market, which is dynamic and is evolving continuously.
How do you determine which products and designs will work in which regions of India?
We take pride in being an ethnicwear manufacturer and a brand, and has collections for every taste and preference, no matter the region. However, having said this, understanding the regional preferences is also important and for this we rely on a combination of experience and data analysis. My father and uncle, with their experience and deep market knowledge, have an intuitive understanding of which designs, colours combinations and embellishments will work in specific markets.
Additionally, we have extensive data on purchasing patterns, spending capacities, and design preferences for different regions of the country.
By combining this experience with detailed market data, we can precisely predict the pulse of each market, ensuring that our products resonate with the end users.
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