Ex-Myntra executives into making Urban Tailor – an on-demand tailoring service for women

Any service or product which exists under the sky is now just a click away. Be it grocery, dairy, apparels, electronics, transport service, plumbers or post sale servicing of appliances; everything is available online and delivered at our doorstep. With every passing day number of e-marketing startups is coming up with new and interesting ideas and facilities to cater to their customers and each has a new story to it. In this era of e-commerce boom, a new name to enter the market is Urban Tailor, a professional tailoring service for women, right at your doorstep! Cool enough, right?

The venture was started by Vasudevan Thrikkazhipuram, Lavanya Venkataman and Ashish Singha with a vision to get your material tailor made with Urban Tailor. It offers complete tailoring services where they pick up the material to be stitched from your doorstep free of cost, and also they ask for a perfectly fitting garment for measurement purpose. The design is done online through a simple design and customization tool which ensures styling and fitting to the perfection. After they are done with the stitching, the apparel is delivered to the customer in 10 days.

The tailoring industry is hugely dominated by local tailors who are not so well trained and a few boutiques which are the high-end ones. And the problem that arises is with women-wear as many of us tend to get our ethnic dresses stitched rather than going for readymade stuff for perfect fitting and style unlike me’s-wear which comes in standard sizes and are mostly readymade.

The team
With over 15 years of experience Vasudevan is a serial entrepreneur and was the marketing and product development head a Simplilearn Vasudevan. He also founded Coatam which seized operations.

Ashish has won over eight hackathons organized by Amazon, Google and LinkedIn. He was a core member of Amazon’s tech team before Urban Tailor happened.

Lavanya is a NIFT graduate and pursued her Master’s degree from the London College of Fashion. She had a stint at EU SERVIVE, and before founding Urban India she was the manager of the marketing team for business alliances at Myntra.

How it operates?
The orders are placed by customers online by suggesting the design of the new garment same like one does at the time of briefing a tailor. You can select the design you want to put for the neck, sleeve, hemline, bottom, etc. while placing the order and choose a convenient date for pick up. After this procedure Urban Tailor clarifies and finalizes the order after talking with the customer over the phone and proceeds towards production.

We have already set up a streamlined supply chain process to ensure that we can handle thousands of orders every day. We, of course, focus on the individual requirements and make the order ready for delivery in 10 days. Our stringent QC process ensures that we provide a great fit for the customers. To go the extra mile, Urban Tailor offers free alteration even after final delivery, says Vasudevan.

Looking ahead
Presently Urban Tailor is focusing on increasing its reach in the Bangalore market. According to an Urban Tailor estimate – over 20,000 orders are being executed daily by tailors in Bangalore, and urban Tailor is aiming exactly to grab a major portion of that market in the next 12 months The revenue is generated by way of commissions from tailors. Urban Tailor also secured an angel round of funding from a group of people who are ex-Myntra top executives.

Competitors are finding a tough time to meet the quality and standards of Urban Tailor as most of them are run by non-professionals. They are small and mainly focus to execute as many orders as possible just to meet their own expenses. This gives rise to a number of errors in getting the right fit and exact measurement.

The on-demand service vertical is on high rise and number of startups is coming up to cater to various niches Apart from Urbanclap and Urbanpro, startups like VanityCube, Bulbul and MyWash.in are evangelizing some of these niche segments.

Urban Tailor is a potential player as well in this niche market as it highlights the main problem of women and their trouble in finding the right tailoring service. Getting the right fit and ensuring great quality is always a challenge, but what is interesting is to see how Urban Tailor overcomes all the hurdles and create a space of its own in this huge market and becomes a top-of-the mind brand across the country.

The service is currently available in Bengaluru only. The cost of a basic stitching service starts at Rs. 500.