It was during a moment of crisis in her life, when her child was born and parents couldn’t be with her for long, that Ms. Anjali Chandran decided to return to her native place in Kozhikode. The chance encounter with a weaver from Telegana, who was on the verge of closing his weaving units back home, also prompted her to venture into setting up a garment store.
Her love for the streets of Calicut that she had been visiting quite often from Bangalore also played a role in Ms. Chandran’s decision to take up the cause of weavers. Growing up in Thiruvangoor near Kozhikode, Ms. Chandran preferred to wear handloom clothes and she connected easily with the weavers who were abandoning their craft for want of patrons.
The online store came naturally for Ms. Chandran, who was software engineer with MS in software from BITS Pilani working in Wipro, Bangalore. The Facebook page of Impresa was launched in December 2012. Soon she quit the rat race and launched into the world of weaves and looms. What started off as a Facebook page slowly took the shape of a website www.impresa.in which was a stepping stone to much bigger things.
Incidentally, Impresa was the first online boutique venture from Kozhikode.
As part of her venture, Ms. Chandran found her way to countless weaving villages in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. “We featured on Facebook the rarest ethnic collections sourced straight from the weavers,” she said. “When I visited one of the famous weaving villages, the looms were almost abandoned and even master weavers were relocating to other jobs.
After one year, the ‘Impresa’ team was successful in bringing back many of the weavers to work. Looms started sounding and for many families, life became colourful. “It is not that I was able to revive the entire sector. But many families feel that I am their lucky customer,” she said.
The reach of ‘Impresa’ widened soon and the few collections sold out quickly. “In the early days, I was working in an IT firm. The feedback from Facebook encouraged me. There was a good demand.” So in October 2014, Ms. Chandran started a boutique in the same name at Emerald Mall in Calicut. Initially, when she started the boutique in 2014, it was another textile shop for others. As the environment of business is largely a male world, there were many raised brows at the mall.
Fabrics from eight states are available with ‘Impresa’.
Ms. Chandran’s switching of careers also brought criticism from other quarters. Parents who used to tell their kids to seek her advice on a career in IT started telling them not to be like her. “There were times when I had to opt out of family functions, weddings where my relatives would criticise me for leaving an enviable job in the IT sector,” she said laughing. During the tough times it was her family, husband and parents, and friends who encouraged her. That sustained her and recognition surely came her way.
In 2017, Global recognition came from Capgemini, a Paris-based IT company, which listed ‘Impresa’ as one of the best 10 social entrepreneurial attempts in the world in the competition session Innovatorsrace50. Anjali went to Paris with ‘Impresa’. The recognition skyrocketed her into the international arena and deal with the best in handloom fabrics. And Impresa was the only Indian woman-founder start-up at the Innovators Race. Ms. Chandran also won the 2017 Jwala Award for the Best Young Woman Social Entrepreneur Award and also got the CMA’s best Women Entrepreneur Award, 2018.
Ms. Chandran also had the fortune of participating in Goldman Sachs 10,000 women entrepreneurship programme at Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore in May 2017.
For Ms. Chandran it was not the profit from her venture that drives her; rather it was the social cause of helping the weaver whose clothes she promotes and the satisfaction that it brings that sustained her.
“I tell my customers that when you buy the original fabrics, it would help some weaver in a remote village earn a living, helping the master weavers to remain in the craft. They will be proud to hand over the trade to the next generation,” she said. But Ms. Chandran is not resting on her laurels either.
Glowing in all the accolades, Ms. Chandran, as part of scaling up, will soon turn Impresa into an online only boutique or even associate with Amazon. Impresa can source fabrics from direct units and resell it on other stores as well.
This move, she said, was as part of helping even housewives to earn some money. Ms. Chandran also said she would be able to better manage the venture if it was online as she was often travelling. The physical store would require her presence in Kozhikode and that would affect the other causes that are dear to her heart.
The entrepreneur was involved in various social activities during the deluge of 2018 and also the recent flood as part of her social activities.
