Why India’s cultural brands need a different playbook

For the last ten years, I've been building Quirksmith, a handcrafted 925 silver jewellery brand, bootstrapped from scratch. For a long time, I made the mistake of measuring my growth against VC-funded brands that were built for an entirely different kind of race. I kept looking at their numbers, their press, their trajectory, and feeling like if we weren't growing at that pace, we weren't relevant. I was trying to fit into a room that was never designed for us.

It took years to unlearn that comparison. To find the vocabulary for businesses like mine. 

This page is my attempt to create the room I wish had existed when I started. A room for founders who have growth ambitions rooted in patience, integrity, and long-term thinking. People building cultural brands, craft businesses, deliberate enterprises, not chasing hypergrowth, but not standing still either. I want to share everything I've learned, about brand, about retention, about building a lean team from the ground up, about what it means to be profitable without losing your soul. And I want to learn from people who have done this longer and better than I have. If that sounds like a room you'd like to be in, you're in the right place.

But first, what is a Cultural brand?

India has been making things for thousands of years. Weaving silk, pressing Ayurvedic oils, knotting rugs, hammering silver, fermenting pickles in grandmother's kitchens across every state in the country.

This knowledge came from generations of people who understood their materials, their climate, their community, long before the word “community” or “consumer” existed.

Cultural businesses are rooted in this knowledge or craft, with a strong market and consumer focus.The point of “a strong market and customer focus” is important, because that focus is what builds strong, lasting cultural brands. 

More specifically, cultural enterprises span sectors like Textiles, Jewellery, Ayurveda based wellness, experiential tourism, home decor rooted in traditional craft, Yoga related businesses that incorporate apparel, experiences, yoga accessories etc. 

Think brands like Jaipur Rugs that have taken the story of rug weavers to the world and built a strong business around this craft - while making a deep impact on the weaver communities. Another example is Forrest essentials that built a global brand on the back of “Ayurveda”, and was recently acquired by Estee Lauder. Jaipur Rugs took 40+ years to build and Forrest essentials has been around for 25+ years!

The point is this: sustainable, profitable cultural businesses need patience to build! And that’s the fundamental difference between them and the VC funded D2C revolution that we are experiencing!

The Investment Has Gone to the Wrong Side

So far, most of the attention in India's cultural and artisan economy has flowed to the supply side (policy, investment, philanthropy). Think artisan training programmes, craft cluster development, vocational skill building.

While these were very important and necessary starting points - improving supply only helps till the point there is demand. That’s where today’s Cultural Businesses fit in.

Unfortunately, there is almost no playbook yet that is specifically designed for this founder who is trying to build a sustainable, profitable, demand-side business around India's cultural heritage. The business that is not a VC-backed startup chasing hypergrowth. But a deliberate entrepreneur building a brand that a contemporary customer can find, understand, fall in love with, and pay a fair price for, year after year.

Jaipur Rugs is the most celebrated example of what this can look like. NK Chaudhary started with nine weavers and two looms. Today the company works with 40,000 artisans across 700 villages and exports to over 60 countries. What transformed it was not better weaving. It was the decision to build a brand around the story of the weaver, to connect the making to the market directly, and to treat the artisan not as a cost in a supply chain but as the hero of a narrative that global customers would pay premium prices to be part of.

And like I said above, Jaipur Rugs took 40+ years to reach where it is today. And India needs many Jaipur Rugs to own her craft and culture story and share it with the world via world class cultural brands.

The Temperament Problem, And Why It Matters

Here is something that rarely gets said directly: the person building a cultural enterprise is not the same person building a VC-backed startup.

The cultural entrepreneur is, by temperament, someone who cares deeply about the integrity of what they are building. About the maker. About the material. About the pace at which things are done. They are not wired for growth at all costs. They are wired for growth that makes sense, that the business, the team, and the tradition can absorb without losing what made it worth building in the first place. And this is exactly the right temperament for building something that lasts forty years.

But it means the playbook has to be different. The channels are different. The pace of growth is different. Winning on your own website requires deep brand storytelling and patient retention building, not just performance marketing that burns cash to acquire customers. Winning on marketplaces requires competing on design and quality at a price point that is sustainable, not a race to the bottom. Winning in physical retail requires careful curation, the right stores, the right customers, the right ethos, not aggressive distribution.

And crucially, the capital has to match the temperament. A cultural enterprise that raises growth capital designed for a business that needs to capture market share in eighteen months will be destroyed by that capital. Not because the business is weak. Because the capital is the wrong shape for it. Patient, long-term, return-generating capital, that understands that a business growing at sustainable pace for twenty years is an extraordinary outcome. That is what this sector needs. 

There are new age organisations like 200 Mn Artisans and NICE Org - both established in 2020 with an aim to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, knowledge and capital for cultural / craft-led enterprises. Their work is opening serious conversations about access to capital and  training for cultural enterprises.

The Consumer Problem Nobody Is Talking About

Right now, cultural enterprises are largely dependent on one type of customer. The person who already values craft. Who already understands handmade. Who already seeks out original over industrial. Who already has the awareness and the willingness to pay a premium for something rooted in a tradition.

While this is a loyal customer segment, it is also a small one.

If cultural enterprises in India are going to matter at the scale they are capable of mattering, we cannot afford to only speak to the customer who already agrees with us. We have to earn the attention and the trust and ultimately the purchase of people who don't yet know they care about this. People who are buying mass market products not because they love them, but because nobody has made the alternative visible enough, accessible enough, and desirable enough.

This is the onus that cultural enterprises carry. It is not just to make beautiful things. It is to build the story, spread it far and wide, and sustain a business on the back of that story. That means investing in a brand. Investing in content. Finding the customer who is trend-driven and meeting them there. Finding the customer who cares about the environment and giving them reasons to choose you over other alternatives in your segment. Finding the customer who is simply looking for something specific and making sure they find you through smart SEO/AEO. 

One Last Thing 

I started this piece by telling you I spent years trying to fit into a room that was never designed for us.

What I didn't say is what that costs you, quietly, over time. When you measure your business against the wrong scorecard long enough, you start to believe the scorecard is right and you are wrong. You start apologising for growing slowly. For caring about your artisans. For refusing capital that would have changed the nature of what you were building. For choosing depth over speed.

This space is to give the founders who are already building this way, a room where their pace, their integrity, and their long game is treated as the strategy it actually is.

So if you are building a cultural brand in India, in any sector, at any stage: This is your room. Pull up a chair!