At its infancy, India’s kidswear industry is growing slowly but surely

Homegrown labels in India are crawling their way into a billion-dollar market comprising babywear and kidswear

Selena Lex Ari’s picture of her posing in an all-Gucci blue-and-white co-ord set with matching white shoes for her birthday got several heart-shaped emojis as comments. With almost 17,000 followers, Ari is an influencer and a model, represented by an agency in the United Kingdom. Ari is also just a year old.

Fifteen-months-old super chic identical twins Harper and Harley have over 8,000 followers, as does Indian content creator Mitali Sagar’s 18-month-old son Krish Patel. Kids-influencer is a thing with more babies clicked looking chic and adorable in designer clothing. In the last few years, the babywear market has grown exponentially, as proved by a study conducted by data tracker Statista. The research stated that the revenue in the segment for baby clothing amounts to a little over $41 billion dollars in 2022 globally. In India, too, kidswear is catching up to become a growing sector, accounting for about 20 per cent of the total apparel market in 2018, and is predicted to reach ₹1.7 trillion by 2028.

While luxury labels like Gucci and Burberry and fast-fashion brands such as Zara and Primark are cashing in on this trend, we spoke to some homegrown brands and labels taking baby steps to grow a sustainable business in the kidswear industry.

Turning personal experiences into business opportunities

In India, besides international babywear and kidswear companies like Mothercare and Gini & Jony, there are homegrown brands providing babywear and baby essentials with the goal of quality over quantity. That’s how Pallavi Swadi’s journey began when she started Coo Coo, a clothing brand for newborns to ten-year-olds in 2012. “When I had my kids [in 2009 and 2011], I found it very difficult to find good quality cotton clothing for them. Having lived abroad for many years, when I shopped for kidswear there, most of the clothes had ‘made in India’ labels. When I returned to India, I saw a gap in the market here and decided to look at the kidswear space, especially when I realised how other parents went abroad to shop for quality products for their kids,” says Swadi, a self-taught designer who started creating clothes for babies, ranging from the age group of zero to five years. Now her label provides a wide variety of clothing for newborns, toddlers, teens and even parents.

For many homegrown labels and entrepreneurs in this field, the need to be a part of this niche industry rose from their own personal experiences. Like Swadi, the idea to start a babywear label came organically to bridal designer Elodie Le Derf when she was pregnant. “During the course of my pregnancy, I quite naturally started looking at baby clothes and realised that no brands were offering the kind of clothes I would have liked to buy for my kid. That’s when the seed for Born was sowed in my brain,” says Le Derf, who founded Born, a baby and kids label that offers eco-friendly garments in India, made predominantly with cotton and natural fabrics.

Also drawing from her own experience is Anjali Harjani, who started Malabar Baby to provide absolute essentials for children that are responsibly and proudly made in India. “When I was working in New York, it was easy to find unique and handmade things to gift new mothers. But then I moved to Hong Kong and realised that in most of Asia, there are very limited gifting options. Most of it is very high-end, with nothing great in the mid-range market. So when I got pregnant, my main issue was to figure out how to get basic home accessories for kids without spending a fortune on shipping from around the world,” says Harjani. Her label has a wide range of categories, from bedding to loungewear, swaddles, towels and more, all made with natural Indian fabrics.

The rocky road

While kidswear is a market in India that is growing slowly but surely, there are a lot of hiccups that homegrown brands have to deal with on the way. For Swadi and Le Derf, it was about getting the price right. “Honestly, I think I was a bit early for the space because my average price was about ₹1,000 for a dress for a baby, which was more of a premium price range at the time, when you’d get clothes for ₹300 that were imported from China. I realised pretty early on that this space is going to be very difficult to tap into,” says Swadi.

Le Derf echoes similar issues. “I think what people have difficulty understanding is the idea that because it’s ‘made in India’ it has to be cheap. There are brands that sell T-shirts for babies for ₹200, but then how much do you think the people who made these T-shirts got paid for this?” asks Le Derf. “When you make a beautiful product and put in the effort to make sure that everyone is paid fairly and that it’s made consciously, then it is not going to be cheap. We have to put a value on the work that the men and women put behind a single, well-made product,” she adds.

Since children outgrow their clothing quickly, is it possible to find a sustainable replacement cycle in kidswear? The answer, according to Le Derf, lies in educating the consumer. “There has to be a change in the mindset of how people perceive fashion and what it means to be sustainable. It’s about being mindful at every level, because while your child is going to grow out of these clothes, that doesn’t have to be the end of that piece of clothing. You can pass it on to others, donate it or even be creative enough to upcycle and reuse it. It’s about trying to make people think differently,” she explains.

Harjani agrees with Le Derf. “Parents need to understand that you don’t need ten blankets and 20 swaddles. Our swaddles are made extra-large so that they last longer. But even after the baby outgrows it, I’ve seen people use it as beach blankets or have worn it as sarongs,” says Harjani. With homegrown labels playing the long-term game here, there is a brighter future for this niche sector.

Expanding the future

Although the path is not without its bumps, kidswear has a shining future as far as numbers go. “People really want the best for their kids and there are parents who see the need for a good product that is clean and responsibly made,” says Harjani. Swadi believes that the gifting and personalising of babywear will witness a lot of growth, along with Indianwear for kids. “When it comes to kidswear, it’s not really possible to compete with brands like Zara and H&M, in terms of trends and price points. Where I see my brand expanding is in Indianwear,” she says. As for Le Derf, she’s expanding Born internationally, starting with her home country of France. “While we have a loyal customer base here, we also feel that it’s going to take time in India to have a boom. That’s why we decided to take our brand international so that we can grow a little faster,” explains Le Derf.

As a parent or an expecting mother, if you have to take one lesson from these entrepreneurs, it is to buy less, but give your child the luxury of quality that will sustain them, and your pockets, for a long time.

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