Lavanya Nalli, President of Nalli till recently, and granddaughter of Kuppusamy Chetti, is set to pursue a stint at McKinsey in the US. This, Lavanya hopes, will broaden her horizons and also help her pick up a few trade tricks that will come in handy when she returns to her family business in a couple of years.
How was it growing up in the Nalli family, with Grandpa around? What have been the learnings?
The lines between business and family were few. As a child I spent my first five years growing up in my grandfather's home, right over the flagship store in Panagal Park, T. Nagar. I frequently wandered about the store, playing with the store employees or just watching the ebb and flow of customers and the bustle of sari shopping. It's wonderful to come a full circle – I can see those experiences through a different lens.
I didn't think I would work in the family business; I interned with the (then) software division of the company during my engineering days and loved the small, entrepreneurial environment. As I got exposed to supply chain and back-end processes, I grew interested in the retail business and then shadowed my father, and found other VPs and senior management across the company willing to mentor me.
I have seen each generation adding value to the company, and now I would like to give back to the business which has sustained my family and provided me with access to the opportunities I enjoy today.
How do you perceive the Nalli brand as it stands today? What do you think needs change?
In many parts of the country, the word silk sari is synonymous with Nalli. When your brand name becomes the generic name for the entire category of saris, it shows we're doing quite alright. I want to build on that and preserve all of the goodwill, heritage and positive connotations the brand evokes.
The opportunity for growth is with the new format Nalli Next, which caters to an increasingly growing segment of younger, urban working women. While the market potential for saris is strong and steadily growing, this emerging class of people demands a different retail experience. To cater to the demands of this discerning sub-class, without alienating our core customers, we created the ‘Nalli Next' sub-brand, which retains the goodwill and brand equity of the parent brand.
Nalli stores will continue to mushroom across the country, catering to serious sari shoppers, while ‘Nalli Next' will give us the opportunity to tap into a growing segment of shoppers with demands different from hardcore Nalli customers. With Nalli Next, we could also explore different formats – boutiques, malls, high-street and smaller format stores.