Fashinza Is Connecting Bits and Atoms to Create the Future of Supply Chain

Atoms. Dictionaries define atoms as “the smallest parts into which an object can be divided.” It is these small parts that fuse together to make the whole. And if we apply the analogy of atoms to the fashion industry, the atoms would be every single stakeholder who holds the industry together. If one is to bring about a change in the whole structure of the the industry, the change must also percolate to the individual atoms (SMEs and brands of all sizes in this case).

IIT Delhi alumni Pawan Gupta and Abhishek Sharma co-founded Fashinza in 2020 with the aim to disrupt the fashion industry and create a supply chain that is built for the future. But what should a futuristic supply chain look like? We can all agree that to begin with, it should be flexible and agile. The Covid-19 pandemic last year proved how rigid and brittle the existing supply chain is. The industry clearly was not prepared for such a black swan event, and both manufacturers and brands suffered from sudden cancellation of orders. This is a problem that could potentially be prevented if brands didn’t have to plan their collections 6 months in advance. Fashinza is filling this gap by fostering the biggest network of manufacturers and digitizing the supply chain end-to-end. As a consequence, brands can now go from planning to launching collections within 8-10 weeks.

The fashion supply chain, apart from being non-agile, is also notorious for being opaque and unsustainable. In most cases, brands have zero visibility once the production is under progress and the involvement of multiple stakeholders makes it impossible to track the status and place accountability on someone. Unannounced delays and communication issues are problems so common that every brand, irrespective of its size, has experienced it. Fashinza is attempting to solve the problem by assuming end-to-end accountability from designing to delivery. What’s more, Fashinza has developed a powerful AI-driven dashboard that can be used by brands to create orders, track every single stage of the production process with daily updates, and monitor live factory footage without leaving the comfort of their office.

But this is not all. Fashinza’s goal is to simplify the supply chain for fashion brands like they’ve never experienced before. To help brands to start small or experiment with multiple categories, Fashinza accepts order quantities as low as 50 pieces while wielding the capacity to produce millions of pieces a month. A major mistake made by brands even to this day is that they invest in a limited number of styles, without knowing whether they’ll sell or not. Limiting the depth of a collection while increasing the breadth (number of styles) would help to identify best-sellers which can then be reproduced. Fashinza’s dashboard has an embedded catalogue of more than 5,000 designs across 50 categories to help brands find the right styles for their collection without investing days.

While on one hand, Fashinza is determined to solve supply chain challenges with a digital intervention, on the other hand, Fashinza aims to empower SMEs on the supply side. As such, Fashinza is helping manufacturers to source fabric (by maintaining in-house supply), have access to working capital, and work with big brands directly without the involvement of exporting houses. In most cases, SMEs fail to utilize the power digital resources due to a lack of familiarity. Fashinza is introducing them to the technology that not only organizes the production process for them but also improves its pace.

Fashinza's existing network comprises 400+ manufacturers from India, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, and brands like Forever 21, Bewakoof.com, and First Cry rely on Fashinza’s manufacturing services. With the $20 mn Series A funding received in July 2021, Fashinza plans to expand bases further to the US and UAE. The team firmly believes that the existing problems for the $635 billion apparel industry can be solved with timely digital intervention, and there’ll never be a better time than this moment.