Founder, House of Anita Dongre | Founded 1995 | Mumbai
A Sindhi household and a mother who sewed
Anita Dongre was born into a traditional Sindhi family in Mumbai. Her father had moved to the city a few months before she was born, and her grandparents were from Jaipur, where she spent many of her childhood summers. Those Rajasthani summers, with their colour, block prints and old craft traditions, would show up in her work for decades. In 2024 she told Harper’s Bazaar India: “My earliest memories of fashion are those of my mother stitching clothes for us.” Her mother, Pushpa Sawlani, made the children’s clothes at home.
In that extended family, no woman had ever worked outside the home. Anita has said she knew she wanted to design by the time she was 15. She started a commerce course at NM College, where many of her classmates were on their way to becoming chartered accountants. She switched instead to a fashion course at SNDT University in Mumbai.
She found her first customers while still in college. In her first year she sold clothes with friends at exhibitions. They sold out, and she has said she has been financially independent since she was 20. When she later took a job after an internship, relatives were alarmed. She told YourStory the family gave her “a lot of counselling”.
Two machines on a balcony
The business she is known for began in 1995. Her own words to YourStory’s SMBStory were: “I started my business in 1995 with just two sewing machines and a loan from my father.” YourStory reported that her father charged her interest on that loan.
The work happened at home. Different interviews put it in her Bandra flat, on a balcony, and in a small space of about 300 square feet. Her younger sister Meena, also a fashion student, was her first colleague. Their brother joined later. Cutting, stitching and embellishing were all done by the family. Looking back in 2021, she told ELLE India: “I vividly remember sitting at the dinner table and embroidering because it felt therapeutic.”
Her parents were not convinced at first. “Initially, my parents were against me starting a business,” she told The Quint in 2017. She added: “I couldn’t be stopped.” The early years meant moving premises again and again. YourStory reported that the sisters were once evicted over unpaid rent.
Building a brand out of a rejection
At first, Anita made western wear for other retailers. When those stores turned her collection down, she decided to sell it herself. “I got so angry that I decided to start my own brand and do it myself,” she told YourStory. Getting space in malls was hard too. Several owners refused her, and her first store finally opened at Crossroads, one of Mumbai’s earliest malls.
That brand was AND, launched in 1999 with its own store. It sold western clothes for working Indian women, a market few domestic labels were serving. The siblings split the work. Anita led design, while her brother and sister ran operations and retail.
Growth was slow at the start. “For the first 10 years, my work and clientele were local; only after my first official show did things accelerate,” she told ELLE India. In 2001 she represented India at the IGEDO trade fair in Germany. A second label, Global Desi, followed. It mixed Indian prints with relaxed bohemian shapes, and YourStory dates its launch to 2007, while credit rating agency ICRA gives 2009. Bridal and occasion wear under her own name rounded out the portfolio.
Investors, scale and a new name
By the late 2000s, outside money had arrived. In 2008 Future Group bought about 23% of the company, then called AND Designs India. By 2013, YourStory reported 104 company stores and about 250 points of sale for AND, with sales growing at 57% a year since 2010. That year the company bought a 180,000 sq ft facility at Rabale in Navi Mumbai. In November 2013, Business Standard reported that Future Lifestyle Fashions had sold its stake. Global investor General Atlantic took a minority position. Reports differ on the exact timing, and its holding later grew to around 40%.
In 2015 the company renamed itself House of Anita Dongre. It launched PINKCITY, a jewellery line, in Dubai that February, and Grassroot in August. Grassroot was built around handloom, hand embroidery and village artisans. Business Today put the company’s FY15 revenue at ₹324 crore with a profit of ₹34.5 crore. It counted more than 2,500 employees and some 650 points of sale across 60 cities. “Grassroot will give the much-needed dignity that our weavers so deserve,” she told the magazine.
The dress that crashed a website
In April 2016, the Duchess of Cambridge wore a printed Anita Dongre dress from the Love Notes collection to a charity cricket event in Mumbai. The label had not known who the order was for. “Her stylist contacted us. We had no idea the dress was for the Duchess,” Anita told reporters, as Dawn recorded. Demand crashed the brand’s website, and production had to be ramped up.
International attention grew from there. Beyoncé, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Hillary Clinton have all worn her designs. A Grassroot store opened in New York in 2017. In 2018 FashionUnited reported a three-floor flagship of more than 4,500 sq ft on West Broadway in SoHo. By then the group counted 1,090 points of sale in 105 cities.
The craft side of the business grew with it. The brand works with women embroiderers through SEWA and with Rajasthani artisans on a Pichhwai revival. The Anita Dongre Foundation set up sewing units at Jawhar and Charoti in Palghar district. About 70 tribal women were working on 50 machines at the first unit when Apparel Resources reported on it. “We are focussed on taking jobs back to the villages of the country where women can lead progress,” Anita said.
A pandemic and a hard reset
In March 2020, every store in India and both New York stores closed. SMBStory reported that the company set aside ₹1.5 crore as a medical fund for small vendors and artisans. ICRA’s filings show FY21 revenue falling 49% to ₹257 crore, with a loss of about ₹90 crore. Sales came back to ₹417 crore in FY22 and about ₹600 crore in FY23. In March 2022 the store network peaked at 233 exclusive outlets, plus hundreds of multi-brand and department-store counters.
The years after were harder. ICRA’s reports describe a management reshuffle in 2023. They also record the closure of the AND Girl, Global Desi Girl and ITSE lines, and deep discounting to clear stock. More than 500 locations closed in FY24 and 171 more in FY25. Revenue fell to ₹438.9 crore in FY24 and ₹346.9 crore in FY25. Apparel Resources reported that the company bought back General Atlantic’s stake of about 40%, ending what it called a “nine-year partnership”. By February 2025, ICRA described the group as wholly owned by the promoters and their family.
Where the house stands now
ICRA’s January 2026 note shows a smaller, more focused business. It had 81 exclusive stores and 365 department-store counters at the end of November 2025, mostly in metros and big cities. Online sales were 15–20% of revenue, and operating margins had recovered. A second UAE store opened in November 2024 and a Los Angeles store in June 2025. Her son, Yash Dongre, is now President of Business Operations. The labels sit in two companies: Anita Dongre and Grassroot in the parent, and AND and Global Desi in a subsidiary, Ochre and Black.
Thirty years after the two sewing machines, the business that started at a family dinner table has been through rapid growth, private equity, global celebrity and a painful contraction. It is back in family hands, and the designer who once embroidered at home is still its creative head. “I started this journey with my sister,” she told YourStory in 2023. “Everything that has happened ever since has been a milestone.”
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Sources: YourStory (March 2014; July 2023); YourStory SMBStory (2020); The Quint (April 2017); ELLE India (July 2021); Harper’s Bazaar India (December 2024); Business Today (September 2015; September 2016); Business Standard (November 2013); FashionUnited (October 2013; May 2018); Dawn (May 2016); FashionNetwork (March 2020); Apparel Resources; ICRA rating rationales (October 2022; January 2024; February 2025; January 2026)
