For Calcuttans, Southern Avenue is undoubtedly an address of affluence. Frequented by morning walkers and furtive lovers alike, the boulevard has recently been lined with a series of novel signsboards. The black advertisements point the way to a nearby store, which is almost as offbeat as its publicity poster. At first glance, the interiors of V-Cut resemble a conventional urban boutique, but setting it apart are the endless rows of blouses that flank its walls. Having promoted itself as ‘The Blouse Expert’, V-Cut doesn’t disappoint. From georgette and chanderi to shimmer and embroidery, there is hardly a fabric or style the store doesn’t showcase — princess, sweetheart, halters, corsets and even the Peter Pan collar.
Siblings Darshan and Lipika Dudhoria, aged 32 and 25 respectively, together tell their very personal story of entrepreneurship. In 2013, Darshan’s wife Megha found herself rather fed up with Kolkata. The city’s cultural mores forced her to wear saris more regularly than she otherwise would, but she was excessively annoyed by the indifferent and lazy tailors. Darshan sums it up with a laconic, “Essentially, one of my wife’s blouses soon got spoilt.” Lipika, on the other hand, long familiar with the many customers visiting her parents’ silk saree shop, saw a pattern in her sister-in-law’s woes. “Women buy saris worth ₹50,000 or ₹1 lakh, but they all have a common complaint. To get a matching blouse stitched, they have to go to these shops in narrow lanes. Tailors here will sometimes make you wait for two weeks, if not a month. Moreover, you’ll never be happy with the fitting.”
“Giving women that perfect blouse” is the stated intent of the Dudhorias, but V-Cut achieves something more. It has extricated customers from long queues at busy tailors’ shops and extended to them the red carpet rolled out in an upscale sari store. “We were entering a wholly unorganised sector. Flipkart, for instance, simply walked into an unorganised world and organised it. That was our intention with blouses,” says Darshan. The Puja season that year proved to be a litmus test of sorts. With waiting periods across city averaging 30 days, V-Cut made an improbable promise — blouse tailored and delivered within 72 hours. “That 72-hour time limit soon became our USP, and even though my increased volumes don’t allow me to keep that exact deadline, I do ensure that the blouse is ready for its first trial within three days,” says Lipika. Clients are handed a chart that makes blouse-making seem like the equivalent of assembling an afternoon Subway sandwich. From the store’s ingenuous ‘menu’, they just need to choose the fabric and design of their liking.
The future of the blouse is inextricably linked to that of the sari. The experience of selling saris online has Darshan convinced that there is life yet in the whole six yards. “Consumption of saris is fairly high amongst people from South India, Odisha and West Bengal. Added to them, you have the diaspora… enough to sustain 50 of us doing a large amount of business.” The fact that saris are increasingly relegated as occasional attire has inadvertently helped boost sales. “If you have worn a sari to a wedding once, you won’t want to wear it again. As a result, my wife has more saris than my mother.” Speaking of trends, Lipika adds one more to the list: before choosing a saree, many of her customers are buying a blouse first. “The idea is simple. If I have a nice, sexy blouse, I’ll invent an occasion for my sari.”
Over the past two years, the business has completely transformed the siblings’ lives. Darshan frequently, and rather awkwardly, finds himself discussing the sizes of low-cut blouses with his mother-in-law, while Lipika has had to deal with clients well past midnight. “I once received a call at 1.30am. A woman was calling from the US and she wanted 50 silk blouses. When I asked her about the colours she wanted, the client left me dumbfounded. ‘Rainbow colours and their family.’ That’s all she said.”
The duo shares a hearty laugh at the client’s ambiguity, but are quick to point out that their NRI and other overseas clientele fetch them serious returns. Darshan says, “Many of my online customers were finding it impossible (to get blouses tailored) in places such as California, Houston and New York. We knew there was an opportunity here, but there was a major obstacle: How do we get measurements?” To this end, Lipika has designed an online tutorial for measuring oneself, but when faced with more queries she organises a Skype session between customer and tailor. “We have to make sure that we have the fitting right. Once shipped, there is no bringing the blouses back.”
V-Cut’s Kolkata team of 40 soon hopes to have a pan-India presence. Buttressing his sister’s design talent with his penchant for numbers, Darshan also has a way with words. “There are three things a woman needs when going out — boots, bags and blouses. Buying a blouse, we feel, shouldn’t be any more difficult than buying shoes or a purse.”