Making The Cut

Value fashion retailers are reporting runaway growth by dressing up the masses.

- Sonal Khetarpal

ORISHA SAPRA, 22, a chartered accountancy student, loves shopping for clothes and footwear, but finds high value brands such as Marks & Spencer, Zara or H&M, expensive. “I look for products that are both of decent quality and reasonably priced,” she says. “I want fashion brands where I can get five to seven pieces of clothing within 5,000.” She is currently saving to buy thigh-high boots.

Sapra typifies the kind of customer who has given value fashion brands in India a fillip. For long, the Indian apparel market had broadly two kinds of products – those sold by premium brands and those that were unbranded, often sold at pavement stalls or in local shops in markets such as Rajouri Garden and Lajpat Nagar in Delhi, or Lokhandwala and Fashion Street in Mumbai. Barring exceptions like Vishal Mega Mart, there was very little available in between.