Clovia is bringing a strong value proposition to the Indian lingerie segment through its high-quality, fashionable and affordable products. The brand, which is leveraging technology to help women choose beyond the standard cuts, shapes and colours, is well on its way to becoming one of the largest lingerie brands in the country.
An exciting start
Pankaj Vermani and his wife Neha Kant are the founders of Clovia. Before launching Clovia, Vermani had been the co-founder of two companies which went through successful acquisitions. His work has gotten him featured in the Red Herring Top 100 Asia and Deloitte India Technology Fast 50 lists among others. Previously, he also headed Mountain Apollo India Incubator, a joint initiative of Mountain Partners AG and the Apollo International Group. Kant, meanwhile, comes with a decade of experience in the Indian corporate sector, having worked with FCBUlka and the India Today Group.
So what prompted Vermani and Kant to start Clovia? “Lingerie has always been spoken about in hushed voices in our country. Often, girls and women do not feel comfortable talking about lingerie, and more so when they are shopping from their neighbourhood lingerie stores, as these are mostly run by men,” replies Kant. Moreover, as a working woman, Kant felt that the evolution of the Indian lingerie segment had not kept pace with the fast-changing outerwear fashion segment in the country.
“There was an absence of well-fitted, comfortable yet fashionable lingerie in the market. Also, while travelling abroad, I had seen the variety of lingerie available there. I thus realised that there was a major gap in the Indian lingerie segment which pushed me to take the plunge and start Clovia with my husband,” shares Kant. Before starting Clovia, however, the husband-wife duo did an in-depth analysis of the segment, wherein they found that the prevalent distribution channels were restricting the flow of customer feedback back to the brands, thereby leading to a lack of innovation and variety in the products. “Through Clovia, we want to redefine the segment and help customers choose beyond the standard cuts, shapes and colours. Our brand is all about finding the unique size and fit for every girl and woman,” conveys Kant.
Along the way
Today, Clovia sells premium fashion lingerie, innerwear, sleepwear, shapewear, swimwear, athleisure and personal care products. “Ours is a full stack mind-to-wardrobe business. We design our products in-house, procure our own raw material, ship to third-party job-workers (who work exclusively for our brand), ensure the quality at four levels and then sell through controlled direct channels to our customers. We have incubated multiple factories to build a supplier and jobworker network, creating almost 2,000 jobs in the process,” says Kant.
Clovia’s design and production processes are based on an amalgamation of fashion and technology. The brand has patent-pending algorithms that help it gauge customer purchase patterns and track post-purchase feedback. It offers 6,000 product styles (250 new styles a month) in more than 75 sizes based on its feedback-led design approach (that processes over one million product feedbacks and other 140 million customer-profile data points) and backed by its proprietary ‘Clovia Curve Fit Test’ (a quick algorithm that asks questions to customers and accordingly recommends the right size to them). Clovia also leverages WhatsApp to share purchase, offer and service updates with customers via the messaging platform. Recently, the brand introduced an online artificial intelligence-based chatbot to gauge what customers are looking for and make suggestions accordingly. “Our chatbot understands customer requirements from their messages and thereby drives sales or service processes. It engaged 2,00,000 customers in the first 30 days of its launch,” shares Kant.
Looking to the future
As Clovia continues to foray into new product lines, it is encountering a host of opportunities to grow internationally. “We are going to explore these opportunities in the coming quarters. This is where our expertise of listening closely to customers and creating solution-based products can be leveraged,” adds Kant. The plan is also to open 150 EBOs (exclusive brand outlets) by the end of 2022 and triple the offline store count in the coming years. And all of this will be done with a continued focus on maintaining a strong bottom line.
This article first appeared in India D2C Yearbook 2022
