Deepa Tracy is a true blue Mumbaikar. She was born, brought up, and except for a brief period between 1973 to 1983, has always been a resident of aapli Mumbai. She was still in college in 1973 when she got married. Remained a housewife till 1978 – her husband was posted in a small town, where it was difficult for women to find jobs. In 1978 her husband got a job in Delhi, and that is where she found her first job as a Trade Fair hostess. It was daily wages work in the trade fair season which lasted from Oct to March. Her first proper job was at the Claridges hotel, where she manned (or should we say wommaned) the front office. This was a time when the Taj Mansingh was under construction just across the road. A lot of the senior people of the Taj stayed at Claridges during this phase. One day, out of the blue, one of the Taj guests gave her an offer to join the Taj. She had done a secretarial course after college – and got hired as a secretary. Indira, the executive who recruited her, was in charge of a unit called Taj Trade and Transport, which was mandated to manage the shopping areas and taxi services.
She was employee #2 of this unit and it remained a 2 person unit for quite some time. This led to all kinds of work coming her way. She recounts an interesting incident of her worklife. The team was continuously being chased by vendors for payments and other issues, so they had given strict instructions to the darwan to not allow anyone into the office without explicit permission. One day, the chairman of the Taj group, Ajit Kerkar, dropped in unannounced. As per instructions, the darwan did not let him in. On being told who the visitor was, Gracy rushed down and escorted Ajit to the office. Ajit was a meticulous manager – and had come ready with a lot of questions about the business. In the absence of her boss, it was Deepa who did all the answering. Ajit asked her about pending matters – and Deepa mentioned a proposal that had been received about a garment export business. Indira had refused this project because she had too much on her plate. Ketkar approved the project – and when Indira protested – he asked her to put Deepa on the project. That’s how the 26 year Deepa got her first taste of garments.
The intrapreneurial experience at Taj helped her a lot – and in a succession of jobs – she moved rapidly to the top. In 1983, the family shifted base back to Mumbai because they wanted their daughter to go to the same convent school that Deepa had studied in. Cut to a decade later, it was 1996 – and she was employed with a group that was primarily into TV manufacturing. As per government policy of those times, importers had to generate forex to pay for imports. So this group had got into garment exports to cover the import bill for Cathode Ray tubes. The company had no interest in garments. The owners were not interested in growing the business, their only worry being about how much cash could they get out of it.
This led to a very stressful environment at work. One day, her HR manager died of a cardiac arrest, while in office. There was a police panchnama. Deepa instructed her staff to take the day off. Sitting alone in the office, after the police left, she started introspecting about her own life. And then the phone rang. One of her buyers was on call to place an order for a collection that had been doing well. She shared her worries with this person, and on realising that she was thinking of quitting, the buyer held back the order. A spontaneous offer was made to Deepa. The buyer was ready to place the order with her if she wanted to branch off on her own. Deepa was keen, but funding a business was a challenge. Two days later the buyer called her again. She was not only given the order: 400 pieces of lady’s shirts, but also a 100% advance. Mantra Fashions was born.
Deepa started her entrepreneurial journey in 1996 at the ripe young age of 43 years. What has helped is that her mental age is permanently stuck at 25. Her belief is that the body can get older – the mind should not. The fiirst 3 years of Mantra were tough. In those days, exports used to be regulated by the Multi Fibre agreement. The agreement was about to lapse out, along with country quotas. So Deepa chose products that were non-quota. Her logic was to choose the slowest moving product, with demand so low that quotas were allotted on a first come first serve basis. The choice fell onto nightwear. The first big order happened three years later, in 1999. The customer, a European mail order giant, continues to be Mantra’s biggest customer even today. When the order came in, Deepa found that the order had been refused by many vendors all over the world. The buying agent was worried that Mantra had underbid for this product. The collection went on to become a bestseller, getting featured in mainstream newspapers in Germany. Cut to 2020 – Mantra has now grown to be a Rs. 250 cr business.
Deepa was asked about how many times she has had to pivot her business in the last 25 years. The surprising answer – 0. During Covid times it took a lot of courage to say no to PPE kits. In hindsight, a good decision, as too many people jumped into that area. It is Mantra’s buyers who decide what products Mantra needs to make. Overall garment exports in the Covid era are down 50%. But Mantra has not suffered. Being in a niche market has helped. The challenges are more in production because of labour shortage rather than sales. Most of her manufacturing happens in Tirupur. There are plants in Chennai and Mumbai too. Manufacturing has been impacted most in Mumbai – because labour has migrated back. In future more of purchasing will be outsourced, as she finds that gives her a lot of flexibility and helps in overhead management. At a personal level too, her advice to entrepreneurs is to go easy on overheads. Conservativeness in spending is the secret to long lasting entrepreneurship.
Her bankers were worried about the geographical concentration of her clients – all of them are from Europe. Deepa has deliberately stayed out of the US market. Her initial logic was: because American order sizes tend to be bigger than European orders, the risks are higher with US customers. In case of a rejection, it is easier to dispose off 1000 pieces, rather than 1000 dozen pieces. In her earlier job, where she had worked with US customers, she found that there was no vendor loyalty in the US. European customers have a more open relationships with suppliers. If you err in undercosting a product, they allow you to mark up the price in a future order. If they get a better price from another vendor, they inform you. Nowadays European orders have shifted to transparent online auctions. Even then, orders are not placed purely on price basis.
Bangladesh has overtaken India in garment exports. EU has exempted Bangladesh from duties. Labour is a big driver of costs in this industry. Global norms are that you need 1.6 humans per machine. India is no longer a supplier of cheap labour. China’s fair trade practices are never questioned. Indian PR needs to be improved. A random visit of a buyer to a carpet factory – and the sighting of a few child labour ends up putting all Indian manufactuerrs on the company’s black list. Fortunately, Indian exports have stayed stable in revenue terms – as manufacturers have shifted to more value added items. One issue that does worry Deepa is productivity. Indian wages have gone up, but productivity has not gone up. Labour laws are stuck in the past. New laws should mandate linkage of wages to productivity.
Moving from exports to the domestic market. Mantra got into domestic sales without doing any Homework. Exhibitions worked out Ok – but Deepa did not fancy spending the rest of her life in a travelling circus. She experimented with a brick and mortar store in Mumbai – but with sky high rents, the overhead was not able to be covered up by sales. The store had to be shut down soon. Mantra’s experiences with the likes of Myntra have been Ok. Myntra has good payment terms and gives you your price, but goes on to add a VC funded discount, and in the process harms the pricing reputation of Mantra’s line. Domestic sales still form a very small share of sales for Mantra. Marketing is difficult in this very disorganised market. There are very few retail chains. Fashion tastes differ city by city, the experience is the same as catering to 20 different countries. Deepa believes that Mantra’s future is online sales – driven by its own website. But till the time that Mantra builds up its own brands – like Milakee’s sustainable clothing line – they will continue to do business through online retail platforms.
Deepa personally prefers knitted fabric to woven. I was intrigued – and did some research on what the difference is between the two yarn weaves. A knit fabric is made up of a single yarn, looped continuously to produce a braided look. In knitwear, you work with kilograms – not meters.
Multiple yarns comprise a woven fabric, crossing each other at right angles to form the grain.
Deepa’s story takes an interesting turn from here. Her daughter has a deep interest in arts. And Deepa looked at art using the same exports lens she had seen the garments sector through. India is the world’s largest producer of films. Yet we hardly export any of the stuff. Indian films in quality terms do poorly in international circuits. Korean and Iranian films win in Oscars, but Indian films hardly feature. So she is looking at setting up an export film pipe. Movies are primarily about stories. International script mentors are being hired to understand what is required for movies to work in the West. She has coined a new agriculture-inspired term – storyculture. We need to take our stories and grow them before we can bring them to harvest. Deepa believes in the power of homework. She looks for distributors even before the first shot of a film. Her paperwork is in place before the muhurat happens. Most Indian producers make movies because they like a subject. But for Deepa the subject choice is determined by her target audience.
What she likes about movie production is the project nature of work. There is no permanent setup, no major infrastructure investments. Everyone comes on contract for a project. Her first film was in 2014 – Sulaimani Keeda – where she was a co producer. It worked well. Social media was just coming in – and was used extensively to promote the film. Risks are high in the industry, but have reduced now because of platforms like Amazon and Netflix. The Indian film Industry is very closed – information is very difficult to get. You have to fumble and stumble to find your own path. There are only 52 weekends in a year which define the fate of any film. With shortages of screens and weekends, it is difficult to compete against the big names.
Work life balance was an issue with Deepa. She realised it early in life. When her daughter was 12 years old, Deepa quit her job to spend quality time with the daughter. Within a month, she got advised by her daughter to go back to work. The daughter felt that when Deepa is at work, she learns a lot more from her mom. Her husband supported and took care of their daughter, when Deepa had to travel. A supportive family helps. A maid can be hired to help with kids, but the maid has to be supervised by grandparents. Values get transferred faster to kids with grandparents around. You could call Deepa anti-nuclear in a sense!. The joint family system continues to date. Her son-in-law is her partner in Mantra exports.
Deepa is an Idea-a-minute person. How does she implement? How does she find people to execute? She has always taken on co-founders who have skin in the game. She believes that employers need to be more generous with senior employees. MSMEs are like families. You have to be there for each other. Her first factory watchman is still working with her; he now takes care of her sampling store. People need to grow with you. Interest free loans are given to employees to buy houses.
One of the things that Deepa started, almost the same time as her first factory, is the Mantra Foundation, with an objective to preserve Indian handlooms and crafts. The foundation has done yeoman service during the recent Covid crisis – serving abou 8,000 meals a day – and a total of 5 lakh meals. The last question she got asked was about retirement plans. A confirmed workaholic, she would shrivel up and die if she were confined to her home. She advises folks to focus on what they enjoy most – what the mind and heart both dictate. Her advice for budding women entrepreneurs. Work before you start off. Better still, start your family before you start off. Once you have learnt to handle your kids, handling Indian bureaucracy is a breeze!