The men’s underwear segment in India is packing more than just sex appeal

From quirky prints to sustainable manufacturing processes and flexible size ranges, homegrown labels are changing the conversation around innerwear

New Delhi-based Sayantan Tarafdar shops for underwear, in bulk, twice a year—just before the onset of summer and before Durga Puja. He believes buying innerwear is an obligation of sorts. For him, it’s as easy as adding to cart and checking out. Visiting a physical store for the purchase is something he stopped engaging in about a decade ago. Tarafdar isn’t an anomaly. Most men in conservative India find little need for well-fitted innerwear. While women typically buy lingerie in hushed tones, men rarely give their undergarments much thought. Typically, Indian men will pick up whatever is stacked near the billing counter in a mall while shopping for other items. Most are unconcerned about brands, models, or even sizes. 

Even the proliferation of online shopping in the country hasn’t changed this mindset, with most urban Indian men not used to taking the time to select briefs. “I just don’t think spending too much time deciding on underwear is productive. It’s utilitarian, yes, but does it merit more than half an hour of active engagement? No. It’s a mechanical process,” says Tarafdar. It’s this mechanical process that most inner-wear start-ups in India want to change. 

The new crew

Take Bummer, for instance. Founded in 2020 by Sulay Lavsi to create affordable, high-quality, and enjoyable innerwear, the brand has sold over one lakh products to date, with repeat customers accounting for 30 per cent of sales. Now, it has launched its first-ever glow-in-the-dark underwear, which the brand announced in February this year. With comfort-driven styles and whimsical, space-themed motifs, the line targets a younger audience and aims to offer something new in India’s fast-growing underwear market. A customer The Established was directed to says, on condition of anonymity, “the glow-in-the-dark underwear is the best investment I’ve made. I enjoy sleeping in my underwear, so it’s nice to have something unusual greet you when you wake up in the dark. Plus, I do have women over now and then and they’ve been quite impressed with the underwear,” he says. 

Mumbai-based Rishabh Sawhney, who has modelled for a Bummer campaign in the past, believes such brands are not only pushing the envelope when it comes to experimenting with prints and new iterations of underwear but is making it more consumer-friendly. “It was an easy-breezy campaign shoot, much like the brand itself. It’s for the guy next door and not just for men who work out or have an athletic build,” he says. 

The Bummer underwear is made entirely of micromodal fibre derived from beechwood trees. These fabrics are well known for their incredible softness and resistance to shrinking. They also have a high moisture-wicking profile (fabrics that can pull moisture away from the skin using tiny, built-in capillaries), making them an excellent choice for underwear. 

Not generic anymore

The conscious effort made by homegrown brands to move beyond just colour and cuts, given that the category has been unable to push the innovation funnel in other areas over the years, has been a welcome change. 

According to Statista, the organised Indian men’s innerwear market is worth a whopping ₹ 17,000 crore (US$ 2.20 billion). While more established brands like Page Industries (Jockey), Rupa & Company, Dollar Industries, Lux Innerwear, VIP Clothing, Amul, and TT Ltd. recognise the enormous potential of the Indian market, start-ups like DaMENSCH, XYXX, Tailor & Circus, and Bummer have also been successfully disrupting the market. An intriguing aspect is that these start-ups thrive in metro areas and are gaining traction in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

“A big part of what sets our brand apart is how we’ve positioned it. We want the everyday man to embrace the underwear-buying process. So, we rope ambassadors like KL Rahul, who resonates with the masses, given the popularity of cricket. But beyond the celebrity appeal, we want to embrace more body types in our campaigns. Most large men are sceptical about coming on board to model underwear because of the societal stigma associated with fatness or obesity. We want to change that narrative because our consumers represent many body types. We don’t only cater to fit and athletic men,” says Petal Gangurde, chief of brand and culture at XYXX. 

XYXX has become a favourite among the new generation of men who experiment with their underwear. The brand, founded by Yogesh Kabra, raised ₹ 90 crores in its Series-B round in August last year. It has grown rapidly in recent years, increasing by more than 300 percent over the pre-pandemic level. The brand sold more than three lakh pieces per month in 2022, mostly underwear, and set a target of selling at least six lakh pieces per month by the end of 2022. 

The brand has also garnered a lot of attention recently by introducing a unique offer within the innerwear category—risk-free returns on a customer’s first underwear order from the brand’s website. The move aims to capture the attention of new customers who are reticent about ordering online due to fit issues and the hassle of returning items. 

The used garment is upcycled by Clothes Box Foundation, a Gurugram-based NGO with which the brand has partnered, into the fabric for useful everyday items. The upcycling process includes reutilising the innerwear to design dog beds.  

Sustainability focused

DaMENSCH—an apparel wear brand—started its journey in 2018 with just three pairs of trunks and briefs in the men’s innerwear category. It has since expanded into five main categories: activewear, sleepwear, loungewear, innerwear, and winterwear. The brand has over 25 sub-categories and a further 250 stock-keeping units. Being an innovation-first brand, all DaMENSCH’s products have been crafted using cutting-edge technology. “We pride ourselves on championing fabric tech, so we innovate while keeping our customers’ needs in mind,” says Gaurav Pushkar, co-founder, DaMENSCH.

DaMENSCH’s innerwear range includes ‘Deo-Soft’, touted as India’s first odour-cancelling underwear and ‘Neo-Skin’—thermo-regulating vests made from a curated composition of sustainable bamboo fibers, among other innovations.

DaMENSCH has grown threefold year on year, having raised three rounds of funding, the most recent of which was Series B, where it raised US$16.4 million led by A91 Partners, with participation from investors including Saama Capital, Matrix Partners, and Whiteboard Capital. The brand has three stores in Bengaluru: Mantri Square Mall, Jayanagar, and Brigade Road, with plans to open a store on Commercial Street soon. 

Furthermore, the brand’s retail and marketing strategy calls for 100 stores by 2024, with a target of ₹ 500 crore offline and an equal amount online by 2025.

‘Inclusive’ is not a buzzword

For progressive innerwear brand Tailor & Circus, all bodies are beautiful. For its founders, Gaurav Durasamy, Abishek Elango, and Vasanth Sampath, hyper-sexualising traditional underwear has led to waning female interest. On the other hand, they believe that gender bias and hypermasculinity have stifled interesting options for men.  

In keeping with their ethos to champion sustainable production, the trio, after conducting rounds of research and making a few prototypes, decided to import and use lenzing micromodal fabric from Austria. “We felt this unique fabric could address the market gap in the innerwear industry. The fabric obtained from these fibres, made from beechwood pulps, is organic and cellulosic, giving it an advantage over cotton,” says Elango. 

The current fabric industry is dominated by cotton, a crop whose cultivation requires a lot of pesticides and consumes a lot of water. Elango says Tailor & Circus prefers micromodal fabric due to the brand’s sustainable fibre production setup. “It [lenzing micromodal fabric] is more sustainable than cotton because it is grown with less water and no pesticides.” “When used as a fabric, micromodal is three times softer and more breathable than cotton,” he says. “This keeps your body cooler in temperate climates.”

Besides its eco-conscious endeavours, the brand has been celebrating bodies of all kinds through its campaigns, free of airbrushed imagery. Plus-size men and women proudly show off their curves without worrying about being judged. “We’ve created a culture that doesn’t allow for body-shaming,” says Elango, who adds that innerwear is available in sizes upto 5XL for men. 

Tailor & Circus also passes on a cost advantage to its customers. It sells directly to consumers, eliminating the need for middlemen. In an interview with YourStory, Gaurav explains how this cuts costs for the customers: “The markups or extra cost in the underwear industry are seven times the original cost for mass brands and up to twelve times for luxury brands,” he explains, adding, “Our markups are just three times the cost, which is possible only because we sell direct-to-consumer and offer premium products at affordable prices.” To become more inclusive, the brand aims to introduce period underwear, wheelchair-comfort underwear, disposable underwear, and more.

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