Wildcraft shifts ‘gear’ to PPEs, masks and more

Chennai

Siddharth Sood and Gaurav Dublish, the co-founders, have launched a new campaign – ‘Hain Taiyaar Hum’ (We are prepared), in their attempts to take the Flipkart and Sequoia-backed entity to the next level.

 The designer duo is unfazed by the pandemic, as they are confident of breaching the Rs 1,000 cr turnover mark this year. “Our venture was started to create a brand that can become a global entity. We saw the opportunity of playing to our strengths (understanding the tropics well),” says Dublish, who along with his batchmate Sood, saw the market for functional products that could cater to the “explorer’s” mind.

 “We expanded in 2016 and become a product company. Since the last 13 years, we have put together a talented R&D team. We have about 32,000 manufacturing set-ups and have reached one lakh point of sales (POS), through tie-ups with key accounts besides leading e-commerce portals and corporate business channels,” he adds.

 In the business of enabling and equipping people, Dublish talks about the opportunities in line. “In the apparel space, we believe we’ll see some amount of demand. Also, work-wear segment is something we are looking at. It can be designed better and we have set up a team for that segment,” he says.

 “This year, we took the call of sharpening our presence by making our brand more visible. Our anthem Hain Taiyaar Hum was conceptualised by Piyush Pandey, Ogilvy India, aiding our effort to take us beyond tactical gear. The hazmat suits, personal protective equipment overalls, protective glass and face shields proved to be of exceptional relevance. We rallied our team together, focusing on reusability,” Dublish explains to DTNext. Interestingly, supplies of respirators began when he got a call from an IPS officer from Chennai when the pandemic was just spreading. “The officer was worried about his team getting exposed to the virus and asked if we could come up with something to equip the team. This is when we convinced our distributors to sponsor and 15,000 respirators were provided to the Chennai Police,” Dublish recalls.

 “Our reusable, washable masks can be used for over 30 times and hazmats 15 times. The per-day use cost is Rs 5. With our 2,500 manufacturing associates, we ramped up to 63 factories and 30,000 associates, across 11 cities (including Coimbatore, Salem, Tirupur) and four states. In TN, we had no manufacturing footprint, but we were able to tie up with a few entrepreneurs. We have 10,000 people in factories in TN. We are scaling up employment at Wildcraft with 1 lakh people within two months.”

 Wildcraft India gets a significant chunk of its revenues of about 40 per cent from south. West contributes 25 to 30 per cent. It also exports to the Middle East and GCC countries.

 On funding, Sood said “We keep looking at our liquidity position. Given that we’ve been profitable through our history, we’ve managed funds through a mix of equity raised in the past, key relationships with our clients as well as internal accruals. We are well-capitalised. In the last 60 days given that we have a purpose, our banks have not frozen but expanded our limits to do what is right for the country.”