Pappu, is my kidswear brand that I started in the year 2007. The idea of Pappu started when my older son was born. I just couldn’t find simple and elegant clothes for babies! The kind I wore as a kid… So I made clothes for him and my younger son, out of beautiful hand block printed and handwoven fabrics. So much so, that when my older son was born, I made 35 cloth nappies using handwoven waffle fabric. Pampers and huggies weren’t available easily and I wanted to use the traditional cloth nappies. It meant a lot of washing but he got pee-trained very early!

I identified a lacuna in the market for clothes such as these and Pappu, the little Indian was born out of a need to address this gap…simple clothes for kids that wasn’t ethnic and yet was Indian. The clothes reminiscent of my childhood… clothes made by my mother or the tailor around the corner. I launched Pappu in 2007 and was selling through my store in Shapurjat, New Delhi. The brick-and-mortar store was shut down in 2016. Last year during the lock down, I decided to start an E store. The online store aims to target children from all over the world and the site is under construction.

The Pappu philosophy: Make children not just look beautiful, but feel beautiful. The clothes are a fusion of indo-western styles in order to address the global child. The silhouettes are simple and the treatment special. The embroidery is done by a group of highly talented women who don’t belong to any artisanal community but have great skills.