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The founder and CEO of BlissClub opens up about her need to create a brand that addresses the problems Indian women face when it comes to activewear.

BlissClub’s Minu Margeret is building a community of women in the male-dominated fitness and activewear industry

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"One of our core values is that we build for “everybody” and “every body”," says Minu Margeret

The founder and CEO of BlissClub opens up about her need to create a brand that addresses the problems Indian women face when it comes to activewear

Being a national-level Ultimate frisbee player, fitness has always been a part of Minu Margeret’s life. But the seed to create an activewear label was planted when she struggled to find good quality workout clothing that fit well on her petite frame (she’s 5’2”). The journey to build a women’s-only, community-first brand was, however, not an easy one for Margeret.

Armed with an MBA degree from the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, Margeret rose through the ranks in the corporate world at companies including Goldman Sachs, Wipro Technologies, Unilever, Anheuser-Busch InBev and PhonePe, before taking up the mantle to create a direct-to-consumer activewear brand in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the multiple lockdowns made production difficult, Margeret took to social media to start conversations around fitness and build a community of like-minded women who challenge each other to move their bodies. BlissClub now has over 185,000 dedicated followers on Instagram, thanks to Margeret’s vision of not just selling products but turning it into a platform where women can be themselves—comfortable and free.  

This vision has helped her raise $18 million (almost ₹140 crores) in the Series A round of funding, led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital, asreported by Mint. The article also mentioned that out of the $18 million, $15 million was raised in equity funding from various investors like Swiggy’s CEO Sriharsha Majety, Mamearth’s co-founder Ghazal Alagh, Licious’ co-founders Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram and Softbank executives Munish Varma and Sumer Juneja, while the start-up raised $3 million debt funding from Stride Ventures.

We spoke to Margeret to understand how she used this money to build a women’s-only brand and a thriving community of like-minded individuals.

BlissClub has raised $18 million (almost ₹140 crores) in the Series A round of funding, led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital, as reported by Mint

BlissClub has raised $18 million (almost ₹140 crores) in the Series A round of funding, led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital, asreported by Mint

The various investors include Swiggy’s CEO Sriharsha Majety, Mamearth’s co-founder Ghazal Alagh, Licious’ co-founders Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram and Softbank executives Munish Varma and Sumer Juneja

The various investors include Swiggy’s CEO Sriharsha Majety, Mamearth’s co-founder Ghazal Alagh, Licious’ co-founders Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram and Softbank executives Munish Varma and Sumer Juneja

How did the idea of starting an activewear brand come about?

I’ve always been a pretty active person; Ultimate frisbee was something I used to play quite a bit. As someone who frequently wore activewear, it put me off to find that a majority of the activewear available would cater to men, and modified slightly for women. I realised that fitness and activewear became major trends, and that people were proud to be called “fit” and were seen wearing track pants and sweatpants beyond the gym. This was a huge opportunity, with a lot of cash flow in this sector. 

The second factor that pushed me in this direction was how  brands had been communicating about fitness and health—in ways that are so superficial, with content based on weight-loss journeys and ab transformations. 

Fitness and activewear is a very competitive market in India right now. What makes BlissClub different from other homegrown brands that have emerged in this space since the pandemic?

I believe that there is enough room for everyone to grow and build. We need a lot more brands in India who are creating products that are specific to the country. For the longest time, we have been importing brands and we aim to do it the other way around—be the first activewear brand from India that is exposed to the rest of the world, starting by focusing on building great products. It’s easy to create yet another pair of leggings that is 100 per cent cotton. But we want to identify the problems that women have with activewear and engineer our products around it. That’s what differentiates us from the rest, because if you don't have a great product, you’re not going to build and grow in the long run, even if you have a significant marketing budget. We want to be a faceless brand, focusing on our community. Our mission at BlissClub is to enable women to be active and, from a larger perspective, this, in turn, helps us to not just restrict ourselves to build an apparel line. 

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"It’s easy to create yet another pair of leggings that is 100 per cent cotton. But we want to identify the problems that women have with activewear and engineer our products around it"

What was it like to conceptualise a brand during the pandemic?

It has been induction by fire; if we've seen this [the months of the pandemic], then everything else would be much easier. We couldn't travel to factories, or build relationships with our vendors, or even physically touch and feel the products for long periods of time, and with lockdowns announced unexpectedly, it was pretty tough. But the pandemic also accelerated the narrative surrounding fitness, benefitting us significantly.

What is the role of social media in building a brand that runs on the business model of D2C?

We were actually a community even before we launched our products. BlissClub started as an Instagram page with family members and friends as our first few followers. Social media has enabled us to build a narrative of what fitness means to women in India, and is a tool that is key to our growth.

It is a way for us to speak to our consumers about our mission and our products. We attribute our growth in the last two years—both as a business and a community—to our presence on social media. Most of our success is built with the help of the influencer ecosystem; women we’ve worked closely with have done an incredible job to build the following that they have built in niche segments that they care about. This is how we want to connect with women in India.

“FINDING THE RIGHT TALENT TO BUILD A BRAND THAT IS MEANT ONLY FOR A PARTICULAR GENDER CAN BE TRICKY, ASSUMING THAT MEN WOULD FIND IT MORE DIFFICULT THAN WOMEN TO RELATE TO OUR PROBLEMS”

Minu Margeret

From what we’ve seen across BlissClub’s social media campaigns, inclusivity is a major part of your ideology. Was it a conscious decision to go in that direction?

A fundamental difference between BlissClub and several other activewear brands is that our brand is built by women. One of our core values is that we build for “everybody” and “every body”. I don't like calling it “inclusive”. I feel like we're blind to sizes and shapes of bodies. Calling it “inclusive” means that there is a certain norm which only ranges from sizes small to extra-large, for example. Our question is: why is there a norm? Why can't just having a human body be the norm? And hence, there is no inclusivity because there was never any exclusivity defining what a perfect human body looks like. So we work with whoever wants to be a part of this conversation; women of all shapes and sizes. And that’s important for us because it comes from a place where women are coming together and saying, “f*ck this shit, I’m going to do things my own way.”

What made you cater only to women when the activewear segment has a huge market for men, too?  ­­

There are two parts to this. Firstly, being a woman I understand women better than I understand the issues that men deal with. We also have more women with leadership roles in our team and hence are able to do a better job at solving issues with activewear. Secondly, we realised that activewear for women is riddled with problems of sizes, fits and designs but no one was addressing them. So we decided to be the ones to do so.

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"Our mission at BlissClub is to enable women to be active and, from a larger perspective, this, in turn, helps us to not just restrict ourselves to build an apparel line"

You’ve raised a total of about $18 million in funding. How have you used this funding for the growth of your business?

We've been blessed with some really good partners. Very early on in our journey we had investors who put the seed money into BlissClub. While some part of it was being able to have funds that help us fuel growth and build a team, a large part was also getting inroads into their ecosystem, whether it is in terms of hiring, or associating with other brands that are part of their portfolio, or building relations with other folks in the industry.  

In the last one year we have proved that there is a problem that we could solve and that we've been able to do so better than anyone else. We've also been able to grow our team and invest in a lot of experiments. For example, offline retail is something we feel very strongly about. It could be a game-changer for us, given the fact that a lot of our products are based on tactility. It’s also the reason why we invest a lot in getting the fabrics and the fit right. In an online world, these details are not easy to navigate.

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"Last quarter, we hit our ₹100 crore annual recurring revenue and it's been one of the fastest journeys for any brand in India."

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"We started with one product—a single pair of black leggings which we called ‘the ultimate leggings,’ and now we have more than 30 products"

What are the challenges you’ve faced when it came to raising money?

The area I found to be challenging was to explain the magnanimity of the problem we wanted to solve. Unfortunately, the investment ecosystem is very male-dominated and it was a long drawn process to make them [the potential investors] understand the problems women face in terms of clothing and activewear. 

Finding the right talent to build a brand that is meant only for a particular gender can also be tricky, assuming that men would find it more difficult than women to relate to our problems. It has been challenging for us to make sure we get the best talent to grow our brand as we have a high benchmark for who we get into our ecosystem.

BlissClub has around two lakh customers

BlissClub has around two lakh customers

Since the inception of the brand in 2020, what has the growth trajectory been like for BlissClub?

We’ve had a pretty incredible journey. Last quarter, we hit our ₹100 crore annual recurring revenue and it's been one of the fastest journeys for any brand in India. Within the first 18 months of launching BlissClub, we had hit that ₹100 crore mark and we continued to grow from there over the last few months. We have around two lakh customers—two lakh women who have been part of our journey. We started with one product—a single pair of black leggings which we called ‘the ultimate leggings,’ and now we have more than 30 products. It does get tougher when you get into different categories, like sports bras and jackets, which we are looking at launching very soon. 

I think 2023 will be the year where we pour into a lot more things that we want to do while we build a community. During the last two years, we've been able to touch a lot of lives with initiatives like ‘step challenges’ where we have tens of thousands of women who are actively participating in it. So yes, building a community has been an important part of our growth, too.

What are your plans for BlissClub in the future?

We are excited to have an offline presence, which obviously helps build a very tangible touch point for our community. We're launching our first flagship store under our office in Bengaluru, followed by another store at Infiniti Mall in Mumbai. We are also looking to launch our own app, which would have an integration of commerce and community.

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