Founder, Baggit | Founded 1985 | Mumbai
Nina Lekhi’s résumé, at the moment she started her company, fits in one sentence: she had failed the first year of an art course, done two short diplomas and worked as a part-time salesgirl. She had ₹7,000, lent by her mother. From that, and from a bedroom in Mumbai, she built Baggit, one of the best-known handbag brands in the country, and it is still hers four decades later.
A good student who stopped trying
Nina grew up in Mumbai, surrounded by friends from business families, The Better India reported. No woman in her own family had worked outside the home before her, according to YourStory, but her mother encouraged her from the start.
She was a top student until about the eighth grade. Then, she told The Better India, she became a backbencher and rebelled against what was expected of her. She loved painting, and in 1983 she enrolled in the foundation course at Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai. She failed the first year.
The failure hit hard. She told Business Today in 2008 that it was “a rude shock”, and that it made her “more focused and determined”. She told The Better India it shook her and left her wanting to prove she was not a “duffer”. Her parents did not scold her for it.
Learning the trade on the shop floor
While she waited to repeat the year, she went to work. At Mike Kripalani’s fashion business she took stock of products for about ₹400 a month; at Shyam Ahuja she sold carpets for ₹600 a month, The Better India reported. Business Today wrote that these temporary jobs taught her selling, inventory and how to handle customers.
In 1984 she took a part-time diploma in screen printing and interior decoration and started working as a salesgirl at Amarsons, a Mumbai department store. India had plenty of T-shirts with slogans, YourStory reported, but very few trendy, everyday bags. She began making canvas bags, and the shop’s owner agreed to sell them.
₹7,000 and a bedroom workshop
In 1985, at 18 or 19 (accounts differ slightly), she started the business properly with ₹7,000 borrowed from her mother. Business Today reported that she cut costs wherever she could. Her building’s liftman and a security guard cut fabric in their spare time, a neighbourhood tailor stitched the bags, and her home served as the warehouse. Outlook Business reported that her bedroom became the workshop.
She did the designing, buying and production herself. Her father worried about her travelling to unfamiliar markets to buy raw materials; her mother backed her. The name came out of a casual conversation with a friend who was humming Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, Outlook Business reported. Business Today put her first year’s earnings at ₹50,000.
Her first customers were the people she had worked for. Kripalani and Amarsons paid upfront, Business Today reported, which kept cash coming in. From 1986 she began holding her own exhibitions, and those shows brought in bigger retailers, including Shoppers Stop and Regal. In 1989 she opened a counter at the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai.
A shop of her own, and a factory
Within a few years the business had outgrown her bedroom. She took a shop at Kemps Corner in south Mumbai, which she opened with her brother and later bought. The Better India dates it to 1989; Business Today says Baggit’s first retail store opened at Kemps Corner in 1992. Around 1990, Business Today reported, production moved to larger premises at the Lalbaug Industrial Estate.
She hired inexperienced young people and trained them herself, a choice she told Business Today kept attrition close to zero. She also kept almost everything in-house, from printing and weaving to manufacturing and labelling, which she said helped her control quality. The growth was slow and self-funded. “The business grew organically and each month I made it a point to reinvest the profits back into the company,” she told The Better India.
From the beginning, Baggit used no leather. YourStory reported that the brand has been vegan since its inception and has been recognised by PETA, and that it designs and manufactures its full range in India rather than sourcing from China.
Marriage, a daughter and a store that failed
At 23 she married her long-time boyfriend, Manoj Lekhi, who supported the business and, according to Outlook Business, arranged some of its early exhibitions. Around 2000 their daughter was born, and Business Today reported that Nina spent about three years away from the business. Her brother ran day-to-day store operations.
The same period brought one of the company’s worst setbacks. YourStory reported in 2021 that a store she opened in 2000 failed and caused heavy losses. She recovered, and she has since described her early failures as the foundation of the company. “I think Baggit is proof that failure is the stepping stone to success,” she told YourStory.
When her daughter was small, Outlook Business reported, Nina kept her in a cradle made from a bedsheet in her office and took her along to the gym. Balancing the two was, she told Business Today, her biggest challenge: “I can’t ignore one for the other.”
From ₹9 crore to a national brand
By 2007–08, Business Today reported, Baggit had a turnover of ₹9 crore, 150 employees, ten manufacturing units, five stores in Mumbai and a new one in Ahmedabad, with its products also sold through Lifestyle and Shoppers Stop. Nina was planning a dozen franchise stores a year. “Either the big fish eat you or you become big,” she said.
Seven years later Outlook Business described Baggit as a ₹75-crore company with 40 exclusive outlets and more than 300 multi-brand stores in 128 cities. It had grown, she said, without advertising until about three years earlier. By late 2016, YourStory reported 48 exclusive stores across 90 cities.
Her life outside work changed too. Outlook Business reported that she and Manoj took up yoga and meditation after a Siddha Samadhi Yoga camp, and that she spent half of each week at Katarkadak, a village near Pune, where Manoj runs meditation camps. YourStory reported that Baggit employees begin the day with meditation and attend periodic silence camps, and that Manoj holds the title of Chief Belief Officer. Nina was clear about her priorities. Family comes first, she told Outlook Business: “What is the point of Baggit being worth ₹400 crore or ₹4,000 crore” if she had no time for her daughter.
Lockdown and where things stand
The Covid-19 lockdown shut Baggit’s operations for two months and caused large losses, YourStory reported. The company responded by aiming more at the mass market, expanding online and tightening its design, manufacturing, warehousing and sales.
In 2021, YourStory and The Better India both described Baggit as a ₹111-crore brand; The Better India reported about 700 employees. YourStory listed more than 360 handbag designs, 360 wallet designs and 70 mobile pouch designs, and a company target it called “10 by 10”: ten times the turnover in ten years. Those are the latest figures available in public reporting.
Nina remains the founder of the company she began with her mother’s money. She told The Better India that before every exhibition, from the very first, she pictured her counter crowded with customers, and that she still does it.
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: Business Today (April 2008); Outlook Business (November 2015); YourStory (December 2016; March 2021); The Better India (January 2021).
