This Billionaire Made His Fortune Selling Affordable Fashion For Big Fat Indian Weddings

Modi, 45, also has premium and mass-market lines for men called Tvamev and Manthan, respectively. In 2017 he acquired rival Mebaz for an undisclosed sum to provide mid-premium and premium outfits in the South India market. The different brands are sold through a combination of exclusive and multibrand outlets, as well as large retailers and online shopping platforms including its own app.

With a third of the country’s population of marriageable age, from 20-to-39 years, Crisil estimates there are about 10 million weddings a year in India, with daily budgets ranging from 1 million to 2 million rupees. Vedant Fashions has also identified some 30 festivals and national days for which it promotes its celebration wear, from Eid, a Muslim feast day, to Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Jains and Sikhs.

Modi, who is chairman and managing director of Vedant Fashions (his son and only child, Vedant, after whom Modi named the company, is chief marketing officer), is gearing up for a robust final quarter of the year, as it will coincide with the first big wedding season (traditionally during the months of November through January) since Covid-19. “We are very optimistic about the season,” says Modi, referring to a time that typically generates about a third of annual revenue. “We want to be a dominant player in Indian wear, across genre, across price and across gender,” he says. “The next three or four decades are Indian and anything Indian will sell.”

Modi’s success has come from parlaying an early play in men’s ready-to-wear into a whole new category of branded wedding wear that appeals to entire families. But he is also careful to cater not just to different income brackets, but also to regional preferences, by, for example, stocking traditional south Indian dhotis (a type of sarong for men), and angavastram (a shoulder cloth worn by men), in stores in South India, in addition to the usual sherwanis and kurtas. “The idea was that you could walk into a Manyavar store and come out ready for your wedding,” he says.

Modi benefits from being a first mover in the market, according to Arvind Singhal, chairman and managing director of Gurgaon-based retail consultancy Technopak. “In the 1980s and 1990s, the men’s market was mainly western-style suits,” he says, “but by the 2000s it had shifted to ethnic wear, driven by a rise in Indian designers and the portrayal of weddings in Bollywood films. Modi saw the opportunity and built a solid business.”

Modi started with company-owned and -operated stores, but moved to a franchise model in 2016. Today, all but four of the stores are franchises, an approach that has allowed Modi to expand without amassing debt, while keeping control over inventory and marketing. He maintains regular communication with franchise owners and there are frequent customer-service training sessions. “The inventory is very well-managed and there is transparent communication,” says Vineet Jain, who operates eight franchise stores in the southern city of Chennai. “He is very process-driven and systematic. He has data at his fingertips.”

DESIGNS TO EXPAND

With many Indians at marriageable age, Bollywood-style weddings are growing in popularity.

Modi grew up in Kolkata, the third child alongside three sisters. His father was a first-generation entrepreneur who started a clothing store in 1975 under the name of one of Modi’s sisters, Vandana. It was in Kolkata’s popular AC Market, one of the city’s earliest air-conditioned markets, characterized by small apparel, jewelry and electronics stores. Modi took a keen interest in the business from the age of 13.

Soon he was practically running the 140-square-foot store, managing the accounts, inventory and sales. The media-shy entrepreneur, who didn’t even attend his own company’s listing ceremony, found his calling in selling, taking on challenging customers and encouraging them to buy more. “If a customer came to buy one garment and you sold one garment, you are doing the job of a postman,” says Modi. “My first kick was in selling to customers who wouldn’t buy.”

In 1999, Modi branched out on his own, launching the brand Manyavar, which means “respectability” in his native Hindi, with the tagline, “earn your respect.” He started with one employee and 10,000 rupees borrowed from his mother, selling ready-to-wear kurta-pajama sets for 200 rupees apiece to mom-and-pop stores across eastern, northern and central India. “For three years my father was curious, suspicious and not very optimistic,” he says.

But in 2002, the father visited the business, and, “After that he was the proudest father one could have,” says Modi. In a reversal of roles, the elder Modi started overseeing accounts at the company, and continued to do so until his death in 2006. Two years later, Modi opened his first Manyavar store, in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar. Today the brand is the leader in the $400 million branded men’s Indian wedding- and celebration-wear market, according to Axis Capital, contributing the bulk of Vedant Fashions’ revenue.

“Earning wealth without earning time is meaningless.”

Modi emphasizes customer engagement. “When a customer walks in, we treat him as a guest,” says Modi. “When he comes for the most important occasion of his life, he should feel … an emotional connection.” He has a novel approach to customer service, drawn from what he calls his M.B.A. in retailing, earned during his years at his father’s store. “You have to treat angry customers a little better than how you treat the customer who comes to buy,” says Modi. “When customers come for a return or an exchange, they know that they will be treated badly. But if you treat such a customer well, that will create … a bond for life.”

Analysts say that Manyavar’s reasonable prices are also a big draw. Men’s kurtas sell for 2,000-5,000 rupees ($24 to $61) and sherwanis from 15,000-30,000 rupees ($182 to. “We’ve democratized aristocracy in India,” declares Modi. Prior to Manyavar, he says, such traditional outfits were only for “important people,” not for the masses. “We don’t charge more and yet we make a good profit,” he adds.

And that, analysts say, is because of savvy inventory management. “Today on a zip code level we can forecast at 93% to 94% accuracy what will sell and where and when,” says Modi. He also limits dead stock, or stock that hasn’t sold and isn’t likely to, to between 2.5% and 3% of total inventory.

“They have the highest profit margins in the apparel space,” says Gaurav Jogani, consumer analyst at Axis Capital, the investment banking side of which handled Vedant Fashions’ IPO. “That’s because of their asset-light model. They don’t do the manufacturing and they don’t own the stores. So operating expenses are low. They are debt-free and cash-rich,” he says, adding that the brand has “top-of-mind recall.” Vedant Fashions’ ad spend, at 7.6% of revenue, is the highest among apparel retailers, according to Axis Capital. Splurging on everything from billboards to sports sponsorship and ads at movie theaters has made Manyavar synonymous with wedding wear. The company has also roped in high-profile brand ambassadors such as cricketing legend Virat Kohli and Bollywood stars Kartik Aryan, Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh.

However, the competition is encroaching. Technopak’s Singhal warns: “It’s such an obvious opportunity and they have done very obvious things. This is nothing so unique that others can’t do.” And others are doing it, starting with Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail, controlled by fellow billionaire Kumar Birla (No. 9 among India’s 100 richest), who launched men’s celebration wear at its Tasva stores in 2021. Additional contenders include listed TCNS Clothing and private players such as Fab India, Neeru’s, Nalli and Swayamvar. But Modi, who for the past five years has walked the talk by wearing only kurtas and pajamas, is undeterred. “Every 30 or 40 kilometers we have a different culture or different language in India. I think [Vedant Fashions] can provide the common thread to unite this diversified country,” he says.

Modi leads a low-key life in a large bungalow surrounded by a lush green lawn on the outskirts of Kolkata where he grows most of his own fruits and vegetables. With more than 30 years of retail experience under his belt, he has developed a refreshing take on his wealth and career. “Earning wealth without earning time is meaningless,” he says. After the death of his father, Modi saw that the company could operate without his constant presence. So he took a step back and now measures what he calls ROTI, or return on time invested, in addition to the more conventional ROI, return on investment. He apportions a quarter of his time to work and wealth management, including philanthropy, and the rest is spent on pursuits relating to health, relationships and learning. His daily activities run the gamut from meditation and yoga to the study of the strategies of retailers such as LVMH, Nike and Uniqlo.

He goes into the office only once or twice a week, but reviews every product line, oversees ads and supervises store expansions. “The market is growing faster than what we were anticipating,” says Modi. “We started this journey saying that people should have at least one Indian outfit in every wardrobe. But now we want every wardrobe to have only Indian outfits.”

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