Harsh Lal, co-founder of The Souled Store, shares insights into the brand’s journey, design strategies, plans for both online and offline expansion, and more
Bengaluru: For pop-culture enthusiasts and collectors, finding high-quality merchandise amidst a sea of knock-offs can be a real challenge.
Enter The Souled Store, which was launched in 2013 as a haven for those passionate about pop culture. The brainchild of Vedang Patel, Aditya Sharma, Rohin Samtaney, and Harsh Lal—three engineers and one lawyer—this brand was born out of their shared love for Star Wars and frustration with conventional 9-5 jobs.
The digital-first brand began with an direct-to-consumer (D2C) website and in 2019, the company opened its first offline store in Kamla Nagar, New Delhi. Today, it operates 36 stores across 21 cities, spanning metros, tier-1, and tier-2 locations.
Completely bootstrapped in its first five years, The Souled Store grew from an initial investment of Rs 5.5 lakh to a Rs 30 crore business by 2018. Afterward, it raised three rounds of funding, totaling around $29.7 million.
The Mumbai-based brand currently ships around 15,000 to 20,000 orders daily and has over 8 million registered customers on its platform.
In an exclusive interview with IndiaRetailing, Lal, co-founder of The Souled Store, shares insights into the brand’s journey, design strategies, plans for both online and offline expansion, and more.
Edited excerpts….
Is there a story behind the name ‘The Souled Store’?
It feels a bit embarrassing now, especially since we are in our mid-30s now and were just kids when we started the brand. We all quit our jobs to do something we truly enjoyed. We were young, full of hope, and dreams, so we wanted a name that genuinely reflected following our soul. Since we were selling products, we thought ‘The Souled Store’ would be a funny and interesting name.
With how many products have you started the brand?
Our entire inventory initially fit into a single cupboard—that was the extent of our resources. A friend helped us build a website, and we rented a tiny office space shared with someone else to save costs. With the rest of our funds, we stocked up that cupboard with t-shirts and launched the company.
With an initial investment of Rs 5.5 lakhs, we could only afford a limited amount of inventory, so most of our funds went into stocking up and building our website. We managed to get ithe website done at a modest cost of around Rs 25,000 with the help of a friend.
Do you handle manufacturing in-house or outsource it?
From the start, we have always outsourced our manufacturing because the core strengths of The Souled Store lie in our designs, marketing, and branding. We collaborate with the largest manufacturers in the country, who also work with international brands for exports. We have dedicated production capacities with each of them, which makes scaling up easier if needed in the future.
Being one of their largest partners gives us an advantage in terms of securing the best rates, preferred timelines, high-quality production and makes negotiations more favourable.
What is the current number of stock-keeping units (SKUs) available?
We have close to 4,000 products on our website across over 50 categories, including top wear, bottom wear, perfumes, backpacks, sneakers, catering to men, women, and kids along with accessories like mobile covers, pins, and badges. We are focusing on ways to limit the number of products available on the platform to maintain exclusivity.
How do you ensure that the prints remain exclusive to you?
When we collaborate with brands like Marvel, Disney, Harry Potter, or Friends, we receive a style guide from them that includes a library of designs, logos, artwork, and iconic scenes from the movies or TV shows. All official partners and licensees have access to the same materials.
However, what sets us apart is that instead of simply copying designs from the style guide, we tweak and personalise them to make the products more appealing and fun for our customers. Everyone on our team, from design to marketing, is a pop culture enthusiast, so we know exactly what fellow fans would love to see in our products.
How do you prevent piracy?
It is a well-known issue in India. I don’t believe piracy can ever be fully eliminated because whenever a brand becomes successful or gains popularity, counterfeit products will inevitably appear in the market.
However, we do not see it as a major challenge. We view piracy as an opportunity. Back in 2013, when we launched, the only options for fans were either cheap pirated goods or imported products. Our goal was to offer quality, affordable alternatives.
If we can provide customers with the designs they love, at a reasonable price, and with great quality that lasts, we become the solution to piracy. This way, we can convert fans away from counterfeit products and towards our brand.
How frequently do you refresh the collection?
Every single day!
Most apparel brands typically have seasonal collections, like spring-summer and autumn-winter, and teams plan a year in advance for the next season’s designs. However, we have realised that customer preferences evolve much faster. We launch 250 to 300 products every month across men’s, women’s, and kids’ apparel and non-apparel items. If we see a character or design gaining popularity, we can quickly produce and launch more of that.
Instead of predicting what will sell a year ahead, we start with designs, launch in smaller quantities, and test the market to see what works. This allows us to pivot and focus on what is performing well, helping us maintain minimal slow-moving inventory. This agility reduces the risk of unsold inventory leads to constant discounting and eventually business struggles.
What is your online v/s offline sales ratio?
We focus on three sales channels: our online presence, which is split between D2C (app and website) and marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra, and then our offline stores. Marketplaces account for only about 10-12% of our sales, while our app, website, and stores contribute around 85-90%.
Many D2C brands rely heavily on marketplaces, sometimes for 50-70% of their sales, or even more. These brands often lack insight into customer behavior and purchasing patterns. They miss out on the ability to engage with customers directly, gather feedback, and truly understand what they like or dislike.
In contrast, we benefit from better margins, can fully control the customer experience, and have access to customer data, which helps us target them more effectively.
What factor drives more consumers to your D2C website than e-commerce platforms?
The simple answer is that customers love us. The more detailed explanation is that it has been the result of years of experimentation.
When we started, we only had our website and were not on marketplaces, so we focused a lot on optimising the customer experience on our website. We launched our app in March 2020, just before the lockdown, and now nearly 80% of our online sales come from the app.
Additionally, we have a membership program, which I believe is the first successful paid membership subscription in the country. Customers pay Rs 300 a year for benefits like discounts, which is appealing in a value-conscious market like India. We also conduct multiple mystery audits each month to ensure our standards are consistently high.
Any plan for new product categories?
I cannot go into full details as we want to keep the surprise element for our customers. However, we will be expanding the footwear and luggage segments.
We will also broaden our range of action figures, which sold out immediately after launch. Perfumes have also performed well, and we have several new fragrances in the pipeline.
Developing a new category is a meticulous process that typically takes six to nine months. We continuously refine our products until we are absolutely confident those are perfect, and only then do we bring them to market.
In the long run, we aim to evolve into a comprehensive lifestyle brand, catering to every aspect of wardrobe needs through a single store.
Which market do you see high demand coming from?
We have noticed that around 40% of our sales come from metro and tier-1 cities, while approximately 60% of our sales are driven by tier-2 and smaller cities.
Whether we are selling to customers in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Calicut, Mohali, Indore, or Bhopal, there is no significant difference in sales. In fact, due to lower operating costs compared to larger cities, our stores in smaller cities are actually more profitable than some of the ones in larger cities.
We refer to ourselves as a Bharat brand, because we believe that anywhere between the top 100 to 150 cities in India are relevant for us. Currently, we cater to every single pin code in the country. There is not any one city or region that makes up a disproportionately large part of our business.
What is the approx. size of a store?
Currently, the average size across our 36 locations is around 1,300 – 1,400 sq. ft. However, moving forward, all new stores will be at least 2,000 – 3,000 sq. ft. Additionally, we plan to have a flagship store in each major city, ranging from 5,000 – 10,000 sq. ft.
Do you prefer malls or high streets to open stores?
Our current stores are more mall locations than high street ones, but that was primarily based on availability. The one consistent factor we prioritise is securing locations with highest footfall, whether it is on a high street or in a mall.
In the next couple of years, we anticipate a greater focus on high streets. This is primarily because we are now aiming to open larger stores and it is easier to find such spacious locations on high streets.
What are your offline expansion plans?
We take pride in the fact that all 36 of our stores have been profitable since their very first month. Another 25 stores will go live in the next three months.
By the end of this fiscal year, we aim to have 60 stores, and by December 2025, we plan to reach 120 stores. By December 2026, we expect to have approximately 200 stores.
We are confident that by staying focused on the fundamentals and executing effectively, reaching 200 stores by that timeframe is realistic and achievable.
Any specific geographical areas you are targeting?
We already have a strong presence in the North, South, and West, but we currently have relatively fewer stores in the Central and Eastern regions of India. Over the next few years, we will see more expansion in these two areas.
Any plans to expand onto quick-commerce platforms?
Yes, we are currently in discussions and understand that customer behavior is increasingly shifting toward instant gratification. Interestingly, we have had our version of quick commerce in place for some time now, even before it became a popular trend.
We offer same-day delivery as an option, if the consumer live near one of our stores and the product they ordered is available there. With plans to open more offline stores, we can convert each of these stores into micro-warehouses and enable single-day deliveries across the country.
In addition to leveraging our own network, we are also collaborating with quick commerce platforms to run pilots and experiments.
