An unspoken taboo that prevails in our society is shopping for lingerie without feeling comfortable. Many women in India feel hesitant to buy undergarments from local stores because of the prying eyes of the male salesperson. We live in a country where even prompting the word ‘Bra‘ in public turns heads or makes people uncomfortable.
A bra is a basic innerwear that every woman wears, many women may like to wear a bra, and many don’t, but we do know that every woman owns a bra to get the best breast support. However, when it comes to buying one, many women feel shy or hesitant because of the uncomfortable glares or harassing shopkeepers. However, this is where companies such as Zivame, Clovia, and others come into the picture. Let’s check out how Zivame, an online lingerie platform is making lingerie shopping comfortable for women.
What is Zivame, and Who is the founder?
Zivame is one of the leading online lingerie shopping platforms based in Bangalore, India. Zivame offers a wide variety of products for women, which is divided into different categories such as lingerie, activewear, nightwear, shapewear, and much more. Zivame has about 28 offline stores and an online platform for easy lingerie shopping.
Richa Kar is the founder of Zivame. Richa Kar, along with her husband Kedar Gavane founded Zivame in 2011. Zivame is making online shopping for lingerie accessible to the women of India.
Early life of Richa Kar
Richa has an engineering background from Bits Pilani, and later she did her MBA from Narsee Monji. After completing her MBA, Richa started working with Spencers Retail and SAP for about 8 years. The idea of launching Zivame came to her while she was working in the retail sector at SAP. Richa realized that there is no such platform for women In India, and it was time to launch such an online lingerie platform in India.
However, just like any other entrepreneur, Richa’s journey had many hurdles in the initial phase. Her idea of selling undergarments online was opposed by her parents. Her mother felt her idea of starting an online lingerie business was embarrassing as she was afraid about what other people will think if she tells them about her daughter’s business idea. Moreover, Richa’s father did not understand the online concept of selling lingerie, and there was no support from him as well.
The Problem with Offline Lingerie Shopping
Many women in India are still hesitant to buy lingerie from offline stores because of uncomfortable glares from people and almost every salesperson in a local lingerie store. This hesitation leads to the wrong selection of bra size, which may lead to many health problems in women.
Wearing a wrong size bra can cause damage to the breast ligaments, which may lead to upper muscle pain or saggy breasts. In most cases, women wearing the wrong size bra also experience back pains and develop a bad posture over time.
Another problem with offline lingerie shopping is the privacy concern for women as many women feel shy to talk about their preferences when it comes to lingerie selection from a local store.
The Success Story of Richa Kar
Even after receiving opposition from her family, Richa Kar was still determinant and passionate about her startup idea because she realized that lingerie shopping in India was a struggle for women than an experience. Richa did not have any fashion or e-commerce background, and in spite, she did her research by visiting malls and offline stores to know more about the behavior of women while buying a bra, or other innerwear.
Richa came to a realization that women want to have a safe and private environment to buy lingerie. Keeping her idea in mind, Richa came up with the name ‘Ziva’ and later ended up choosing ‘Zivame’, which means Radiant me.
After a lot of hard work and struggles, Richa was able to partner with the top brands and launched Zivame in 2011 with all of her savings and some support from her friends. Zivame went on to become one of the best platforms for online lingerie shopping, and it has an annual net revenue of about 340 crore for FY20 .
If you want to further read about the success story of Richa Kar, Click here: https://www.startupstories.in/stories/inspirational-stories/zivame-founding-story
Why Zivame became the One of the Best Platform for Lingerie Shopping?
Zivame provides a comfortable and private environment to women, who otherwise feel shy to even share their preferences when it comes to selecting the right bra, nightwear, or other innerwear. Women can now buy lingerie freely on the Zivame platform.
Women feel much more confident while doing lingerie shopping from the Zivame app installed on their phones or via the official website. We can say that lingerie shopping is now easy and accessible to many women in India.
Zivame became one of the best platforms for lingerie shopping as it provides women and even men to buy lingerie for their wives at the comfort of their home. Moreover, women can use filters such as size, type, brand, material, color, and other such filters on Zivame to find the perfect innerwear as per their preferences. Zivame infused such confidence in Women and gave them a place to embrace their womanhood.
Conclusion
So, this was how Zivame founder Richa Kar made it all possible to provide an online platform to women for lingerie shopping freely and away from the prying eyes of the creepy salesperson in a local lingerie store.
After all, Richa selected the name ‘Zivame’, which means Radiant me to encourage women to feel beautiful in their own skin by wearing the right lingerie.
To know more about Zivame and its founder, you can check out this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsXt19RTxcc
