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<ul><li>Many have also started their online store to sell second-hand clothes and household goods online, a popular trend known as <keyword id="1599036" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="thrifting" source="Orion">thrifting</keyword>.</li><li>It is a sustainable business too as an e-store owner can earn a profit margin of about ₹500 on a dress worth ₹850 (including shipping).</li><li>The fashion industry produces and sells roughly 21 articles per human being on this planet annually (2020).</li></ul>What began as a simple website to upload photographs online is currently enabling a cultural, economic and social shift. The thrifting trend is the new thing that Instagram has added to its cart, especially in the Indian subcontinent regions of India, Pakistan, and Nepal. The boredom and the need to break the monotony gave rise to several new small businesses on Instagram over the last two years. While some sell scrunches online, others use their illustration skills to sell digital art online. Many have also started their own online store to sell second-hand clothes and household goods online — a trend that is popularly known as thrifting. Aimée (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/aimee.loved/">@aimee.loved</a>), Believe It Thrift It (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/believethrift/">@believethrift</a>), At Momo (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/momo.finds/">@momo.finds</a>), WOO (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/woasonali/">@woasonali</a>), The Vintage (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/thev_intage/">@thev_intage</a>), and Thrift India (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/thrift_india/">@thrift_India</a>) are just a few Indian thrift stores with over 1.84 lakh followers in total. The thrift stores have also made the concept of secondhand fashion popular – even desirable – among young shoppers while building a sustainable business model of it. A Rest of World report citing an anonymous source noted that an e-store owner could earn a profit margin of about ₹500 on a dress worth ₹850 (including shipping). Second hand clothing is one of the fastest growing sectors in the global fashion marketplace, especially as customers seek affordable and eco-friendly options. According to a <a href="https://www.thredup.com/resale/#resale-industry">report</a> by resale platform ThredUp and the analytics firm GlobalData, global used clothing sales would rise to nearly $77 billion by 2025. The industry currently sits at a $36 billion opportunity this year. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Thrifting is a great initiative for the environment too" comment="subhead" text="Thrifting is a great initiative for the environment too">Thrifting is a great initiative for the environment too</cmsannotation> The fashion industry produces and sells between 80 billion and 150 billion garments a year globally (2020), roughly up to 21 articles per human being on this planet. About three in five of these clothing products end up in incinerators or landfills within years of production. If not managed properly, old clothes end up in incinerators or landfills within years of production. Clothes do not biodegrade in a landfill and could remain there for more than 200 years before decomposing. According to the Waste Management Hierarchy — a scale that ranks waste management options by their environmental impact — landfills are the most harmful to our planet. That said, thrifting and upcycling old clothes will also be great for the environment. Anurag Asati, the co-founder of waste management company The Kabadiwala, previously told Business Insider that old <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/news/impulse-buys-fast-fashion-end-up-in-landfills-and-stay-intact-for-200-years/articleshow/92533424.cms">clothes are among the most difficult items</a> to collect and process. They require a lot of effort and resources, making the recycling process much more expensive. Thrift stores — or these second hand clothing stores — allow the clothes to be reused without additional inputs, thereby reducing their carbon footprint. SEE ALSO <a class="tout-title-link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/reliance-industries-itc-infosys-and-other-hot-stocks-on-july-22/articleshow/93041515.cms">Indian markets open in the green – RIL, M&amp;M gain while Nifty IT, Infosys decline</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/amazon-prime-day-best-offers-deals-discounts/articleshow/93024348.cms">Amazon Prime Day 2022 – early deals, bank offers, Prime membership and everything else you need to know</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/reliance-industries-to-start-fy23-with-strong-earnings-thanks-to-refining-margins/articleshow/93041430.cms">Reliance Industries to start FY23 with strong earnings, thanks to refining margins</a>

Thrifting is the latest trend on Indian Instagram, and it is a great one for the environment

<ul><li>Former PM Rajiv Gandhi said, “Do not design this office for me but design it for the Prime Minister of India.” </li><li>All working women are constantly challenged because we live parallel lives.</li></ul>I have been asked to speak about my journey as an entrepreneur and a design professional. Let me begin by saying that when I began work as an interior designer and furniture manufacturer in 1971, there were no words such as “entrepreneur” or “branding” or things like Instagram and various other forms of social media that exist today. I became a designer because of family influences and growing in a city like Lucknow which is imbued with tehzeeb and nazakat. I do not think I could have been a designer if I had had parents other than those I was blessed with. They were interested in reading and the acquisition of knowledge. My father believed that books would always remain the central element of civilisation. For us knowledge came from immersive reading, and we were voracious readers. We were always interested in places and peoples. We delighted in reading the atlas and dictionaries. In the last 50 years there have been so many places which were our dream destinations, and which one has now visited……… and many places like Machu Picchu that one has not! Perhaps it is still not too late. Because of our father’s immense love for travel and discovery we saw so much of India. The first heritage site that I ever visited was at the age of nine. That was Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu and the Temple of the Tooth and the Botanical Gardens in Kandy in Ceylon. All of these were early influences and have influenced my design sensibilities. I have a very contemporary mindset but one that is also deeply grounded in our own heritage. This is because one has had the good fortune of travelling through the length and breadth of India. Much as one has enjoyed the cultures of other countries, I have a deep and constant curiosity about our own country. All this informs the way I work. As far as design education is concerned, I became a designer by accident – serendipitously so! The study of literature and Hindustani classical music enriched my mindscape. I do not have formal training in design but grew up surrounded by design…….. with my father visiting many auction houses and kabadiwalas in Lucknow. It fills me with quiet pride that, as a woman without any formal training in design, I became the first designer in India, man or woman, to be conferred the <keyword id="25105" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="padma-shri" source="Orion">Padma Shri</keyword> in 1992. I was reasonably young to be bestowed this honour and I thought at that time that it would open the floodgates to many more interior designers. I have also had the distinction of being the first architect or designer from India to be invited to give an illustrated talk in 2003, at the National Building Museum in Washington DC. This museum is the most visited museum of architecture in the world. Its atrium is the venue of the first presidential ball after a new president has been sworn in. In 2014, I was appointed Chairperson of the Board School of Planning and Architecture in Bhopal, a National Institute of Excellence. That was also a first! But, if you ask me whether I was working towards breaking these glass ceilings, then the answer would be an emphatic no! These happened along the way, as a natural progression in a career in which one had put in much hard work. In my profession one is as good as one’s last project. That gets one more work and not because they like your face. No client is going to spend millions of dollars commissioning you to design their hotel if they do not believe in your talent and your ability to deliver. <div type="image" title="05 South Drawing Room, Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi" msid="98578011" hostid="261" sizebytes="111308" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;South Drawing Room, Rashtrapati Bhawan&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> From 1985 to 1989, I worked on the restoration and conservation of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and in 1988 to 1989 on Hyderabad House. That was the first time that HH was closed for nine months because it was not just the interior decoration that was attended to but also all the interior architecture and services like air conditioning. I designed both the decrepit courtyards in a Lutyensesque style and restored the gardens in Hyderabad House. As far as British buildings in New Delhi are concerned, I had the great privilege of working in the Prime Minister’s Office and Secretariat in South Block. And am happy to note that it has remained unchanged through the tenures of the last nine Prime Ministers. The primary reason for this was the brief from the former PM, Rajiv Gandhi…… “do not design this Office for me but design it for the Prime Minister of India”. I followed this brief and worked on the building as these I firmly believe belong to the nation. His second brief was that he wanted his executive chair to be the same height as his visitors’ chairs. These are all very telling traits of character. I also designed the official residence of the Prime Minister along with restoring the two buildings that comprise the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum. In New Delhi one has also designed the interiors of the British Council Building and Library. In my career this has been a landmark project because this is the largest of their 80 institutes worldwide. It was inaugurated in 1992 by HRH the Prince of Wales. When we were presented to him, he had a very interesting conversation with me regarding the buildings on either side of the British Council. He certainly has a keen eye for architecture. <div type="image" title="03 National Assembly Building in Thimpu, Bhutan" msid="98578068" hostid="261" sizebytes="195996" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;National Assembly Building, Bhutan&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> Another landmark building for me in 1989 was the <keyword id="1142396" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="parliament-building" source="Orion">Parliament Building</keyword> in Bhutan called the National Assembly Building. For me, this was a completely new area of research. In those days so little was known of the art and architecture of Bhutan and neither were any books available. Immersive travelling through Bhutan, to familiarise myself with its architecture and its arts and crafts became essential. His Majesty’s office appointed as my guide, Dasho Khandu who was a living encyclopaedia on Bhutanese art and architecture. These have been amazing projects of learning for me. I like to deeply research new places and new cultures. So maybe, at the end of the day, I think this profession chose me and one is fortunate as this process of working suits my mindset. In a long design career of 50 years, I had a break in 1998. I had simply fallen off a ladder in the house and had fractured two of my cerebral vertebrae. That is when I decided I would stop designing hotels which I had done for the past almost 30 years. At that point I thought I would just design residences in and around India and not travel out to Egypt, Bhutan, England, Timbuktu, etc. But life had other plans! I went on to design a large residence in Sri Lanka and was commissioned to design a boutique hotel in the old city of Lahore. Sadly, that project was eventually abandoned. When I was in Lahore for their Literary Festival at the end of February this year when I saw this building standing as is, it made me quite nostalgic. Lahore is a beautiful city and the people are very hospitable. Along this design journey many institutions have asked me to come to give illustrated lectures. For the ‘Millennium Book on Delhi’, I was one of the eight contributors who wrote an extended essay on ‘The Planning of New Delhi’. <keyword id="118548" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="oxford-university-press" source="Orion">Oxford University Press</keyword>, the publishers of the book have a world-wide reach. That is how the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University heard of this unknown Indian and invited me to give an illustrated talk. Thus began a parallel career in being a speaker. Since Harvard one has given many lectures in many universities and institutions in the US, the UK and in South East Asia on design, architecture, conservation, literature, on ‘Mughal Jewellery as a Statement of Empire’, world heritage cultural sites in India and on social entrepreneurship. One has always believed that women such as oneself are privileged because we are educated. Never mind that we belong to the working classes! We must, with humility and gratitude, help those that are less fortunate. One has been deeply associated with ‘Satyagyan Foundation’ which was an affiliate of ‘World Literacy Canada’. Based in Varanasi, we have worked in about 400 slum areas and have altogether made 23,000 women literate. One has also been associated with ‘Save a Mother’ which was started by the amazing Dr Shiban Gunju. He has reduced the mortality rate of pregnant women by 93%. One was the founding member and last chairperson of ‘Umang’, an NGO that worked for the betterment of street children. These have been my interests and each has been a milestone. Another milestone was co-authoring ‘The Lucknow Cookbook’ with my mother. It is now in its tenth print run and has been declared a classic by Aleph, the publishers. More recently I produced and edited the large formatted book, ‘Kala - Essays on Contemporary Design Aesthetics’ which was launched in Dubai in 2019 by Sheikh Nahan and in October 2022. It had its first proper launches in Milan and London by Artize of the Jaquar Group. In November 2022, it was launched in New York and most recently in February 2023 at the ‘Lahore Literary Festival’. Every stage in life has its own milestones particularly if one is also a wife, a mother and a grandmother. All working women are constantly challenged because we live parallel lives. For me every project, whether large or small, has been a challenge. It has all added to my body of work and to my learning curve. I have never thought of myself as a woman doing all these things……. I think one creates one’s own benchmark and this is the way one has moved forward. I am still working and writing more books as our daughter, the award-winning architect <keyword id="8435490" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="kohelika-kohli" source="Orion">Kohelika Kohli</keyword>, has taken over the business of running K2India. She has just launched her new brand of furniture called KOKO by K2India. One feels justifiably proud that one must have done something right. One gave them the tools of a fine education and took them travelling to broaden their minds. And then left them to follow their own passions. (The writer is an award winning architect and an author)

A Padma Shri winning architect takes us through her journey from Lucknow to Lutyens

<ul><li><keyword id="4936066" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="whatsapp-business">WhatsApp business</keyword> was launched in 2018 and since then has over 5 million users on the platform. </li><li>According to data shared by <keyword id="2069427" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="WhatsApp-India">WhatsApp India</keyword> to Business Insider, 78% SMBs on <keyword id="790242" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="WhatsApp">WhatsApp</keyword> have also registered sales growth. </li><li>Meanwhile, 80% of SMBs on WhatsApp in India believe the platform allows them to sell products or services in other cities, states or countries. </li></ul>WhatsApp may be embroiled in multiple controversies in India today, but the company’s focus on the country’s <keyword id="469687" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="small-and-medium-businesses">small and medium businesses</keyword> remains undeterred – with WhatsApp Business. WhatsApp business was launched in 2018 and since then has over 5 million users on the platform. During a recent chat at the TiE Global Business Summit, WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose also spoke about the platform’s focus on India’s small businesses. “We have actually tried to invest and support a lot of the ecosystem here in India. We work with NITI Aayog in one of their programmes, we also ran a challenge – WhatsApp startup challenge where we gave the first cheque to some of the small businesses. This country will grow when the small business ecosystem grows,” he had said during a panel discussion at the summit. Conversions and sales, thanks to WhatsApp The Kabadiwala – a startup which literally does what the name says, picks up waste from houses, was faced with the conundrum – how does it reach out to the millions of homes that are dealing with waste. The startup turned to WhatsApp business. "A lot of people use WhatsApp and find it very easy to communicate, so we thought we'd make the booking process easy and allowed our users to send a message to our WhatsApp Business account for the pickup request,” said Anurag Asati, founder, The Kabadiwala. About 60 percent of their pickup requests today come via WhatsApp. He also said that they have seen a 40 percent increase in their sales after using the WhatsApp Business app. According to data shared by WhatsApp India to Business Insider, 70% of SMBs on WhatsApp in India say they built their business on the platform, while 77% of SMBs businesses on WhatsApp in India have been able to hire more employees as they grew after joining the platform. The data is sourced from Morning Consult Intelligence. India has over 400 million WhatsApp users, which makes it really easy for businesses to reach out to a large customer base. Cuir Ally, a luxury leather goods brand which claims to have built India’s first anti-theft technology-enabled smart wallets and tech-powered safety clutches for women, too used WhatsApp business for growth. “WhatsApp has been a big game-changer for us,” said its co-founder T.S Sathyaraj. After adding a WhatsApp widget on their website, their conversions increased by 10% after they made the switch from traditional live chat software. Sathyaraj added that 30 percent of orders come in through a link on their website that connects customers directly to WhatsApp. Creating entrepreneurs and scaling them up The use of WhatsApp business also enabled individuals to turn into entrepreneurs. Today, WhatsApp is enabling SMEs across sectors like retail, food and beverages, crafts, technology, education, delivery services, baby products, agriculture, and apparel. Established businesses and startups alike are using WhatsApp as an effective mode of communication to reach out to their consumers. Moreover, 78% SMBs on WhatsApp also registered sales growth, while 80% of SMBs on WhatsApp in India believe the platform allows them to sell products or services in other cities, states or countries. No Broker is real estate platform connects owners and tenants directly. It has created a channel on WhatsApp where people can list their property. “So for us the questions were - how would we reach out to the owner? How do we reach out to the tenant? The owners being somewhere between 45-50 plus who own the house, how do we communicate with them? So that's where WhatsApp plays a critical role because the one thing before, WhatsApp Business API – which was missing in India was a channel where two way communication can happen other than voice,” said Akhil Gupta, founder of No Broker at the TiE summit panel, about how they use WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is a game changer for India’s small businesses – from smart wallet makers to trash pickers

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Thrifting is the latest trend on Indian Instagram, and it is a great one for the environment

Kritti Bhalla

A Padma Shri winning architect takes us through her journey from Lucknow to Lutyens

Sunita Kohli

WhatsApp is a game changer for India’s small businesses – from smart wallet makers to trash pickers

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