Neha Bhatia
At 27, chirpy Neha Bhatia comes across as just another girl-next-door. It’s difficult to picture her cracking numbers, mulling over complicated financial reports, scouting through dingy markets for fabrics and haggling with hard-nosed shopkeepers.

Bhatia had been working with HSBC Bank as a financial planning manager for almost two-and-a-half years when she decided to float her own venture. And from finances to fabric merchandising, changing gears seems to have come easily to her.

“I floated Kutz N Stichez one-and-a-half years back. I specialise in fabric merchandising, i.e. in the designing and manufacturing of T-shirts and caps etc to suit one’s requirement. I usually deal with corporate clients where the company’s logo or a message is either printed or embroidered on the surface of a tailor-made product,” explains Bhatia.

An unusual choice for a designer you wonder. But then, there’s some smart business thinking that went behind the venture. “If it’s all about creative satisfaction, I would rather have my job and do odd designing stuff for entertainment. However, I wanted to float a profit-making venture,” she says.

Come to think of it, even the smallest companies provide employees with custom-made tees, caps, bags etc and there are very few people completely devoted to that sort of merchandising. “I deal with product and company promotions, sports events, school apparel, clubs and retail organisations,” says Bhatia.

It wasn’t easy to give up a cushy job for an endeavour in a field that is not known widely for its success stories. “But then, I realised if my employers could be happy with me, I was a performer for sure. So why not work for yourself than working for somebody else,” says the pass-out of Loreto House.

From the confines of a plush office and luxury of fixed work hours, to the grime of wholesale markets and deadlines, Bhatia’s life changed forever. Apart from the physical discomfort, for a start-up, there were several other things to be dealt with. “I didn’t have many employees then and had to do most things myself. The fabric market in the interiors of north Kolkata were very difficult to negotiate,” she says. And unfortunately, the city is yet to wake up to the concept of women directly dealing with vendors from remote areas. You have to rely on middle men to source fabrics. “But I hope to get rid of such hindrances soon,” she smiles.

“The best part of my work is client satisfaction. And my involvement in understanding their brand value,” says Bhatia, whose list of clients include Max Mueller Bhavan, Future Hope Foundation, Saturday Club, Bengal Rowing Club, Calcutta Swimming Club, among others. The designs created for Future Hope were accepted for their function head in Europe and was customised for the entire organisation.

But then, there are problems aplenty. “It’s a chain manufacturing process and requires a lot of coordination. The set-up needs a lot of support from ancillary divisions. The failure of one particular section results in breaking the chain. I am always working on deadlines as I primarily cater to clubs and corporates where events are all pre-scheduled. There are a lot of foreseen and unforeseen circumstances like bandhs, cable faults and power failure which delay the process of production and thus lead to failure in delivery,” says Bhatia.

“It’s a test of patience dealing with vendors at times and then dealing with clients almost paranoid about getting their work done,” she laughs.

In future, she intends to turn her brand into a name to look out for, with projects from international brands.