During a factory visit of bags, owner Upkar S Sharma shares with A Mishra how starting a business with youngsters is not a risk as they come up with creative ideas and are always ready to experiment
It takes courage to start a new business especially at the time when another estabilished business is already running successfully. But for Upkar S Sharma, founder of Mohawk, a start up brand for bags, it was an amazing journey and according to him there is a risk in every job irrespective of whether it is a business or a regular nine to five job. “Then why not take a risk and start something of our own,” he questioned.
The credit for the business set up doesn’t solely go only to Sharma but it also goes to his partners, Ipsa Bansal, business head and Aarti Mehta, lead designer. Praising the work of his partners, Sharma said, “Today, whatever we have achieved is just because of Ipsa and Aarti. They brought in creative ideas and I just had to give a green signal.” He added, “In fact my approval is just for formality’s sake. If I am not available and am on some other work, they just call and inform me about a project before starting it.”
We were invited for a visit to the Mohawk factory and there were explained each and every detail about how a bag is manufactured there. Bansal took us on the tour of the factory and she explained the working process involved in the making. She said, “The first step in manufacturing is designing (pointing towards Mehta) which is completely in the hands of our in-house designer. After which she discusses the size and length of the fabric with the workers who are appointed for cutting the fabrics.” Mehta interrupted Bansal and elaborated about the fabric, “There are two types of fabrics that we use. One is printed fabric and the other is the non-printed one.” She showed us a bundle of printed fabrics and explained, “In the roll, the prints are uneven. Somewhere it is light and somewhere it is dark. So we cut the pieces and group them according to the shades so that when we make a bag, the prints are even.”
After sizing the fabrics, manufacturing starts which includes stitching the shape, making shoulder straps and fixing buckles and zips on to the finished product.
“After manufacturing, the bags come to the finishing department and here we remove stains, marks, unwanted thread, et al. to give it a perfect look,” Bansal elaborated.
Once the finishing department completes their job, the bags are sent for tagging. “Here we attach the brand tag and the bag making process is complete,” said Bansal.
The company which was started last year, has now spread over several e-commerce portals. “This was the idea of Ipsa and Aarti to sell our bags on few of the leading e-commerce websites. Today we despatch 900 bags in a month to them,” Sharma pointed out.
During his conversation, he told us that they are planning to launch their own web portal. “After launching our web portals, we are planning to expand our business for which we will launch flagship store very soon,” Sharma informed.
The company provides variety of ranges from hand bag to travel bag, from laptop bags to trolley bags and that too at reasonable prices.