Tantra (India-on-a-tshirt), is a pioneering start-up t-shirt brand of India, created out of the desire to express creativity via the youth of the subcontinent.
The original brief for the label was to convey the life and times of the brown race to foreign tourists visiting India. Quirky, humorous and combined with irreverent copy and art, the brand became an instant cult classic, and a generic name for the category.
Today it has a national presence, although initially, it was hard to break established mind-sets. The brand is currently present in 30 plus exclusive brand outlets, 25 plus shop-in-shops and 200 plus multi brand outlets.
Due to the intellectual nature of the brand/label, physical (offline) markets are still to be consolidated, as less than 50 percent area of the sub-continent has been mapped. Today it has presence in 15 cities and 9 states and is targeting more in Tier 1 and tier 2 cities which are catching up faster than metros, in terms of buying power and acceptance.
As Ranjiv Ramchandani, Director, Tantra says, “For the next 2-3 years, the challenge lies in opening up unexplored markets, as well as consolidating current markets. This is applicable to both offline and online domains.”
Tantra is one of the only stand-alone, t-shirt startup from India to have EBO’s internationally, with the latest being in Seattle, USA. The company realizes that rapid, 10x scale up needs funding, and thus is working on this aspect, to proper future growth and expand more internationally.
