Reddy has built a formidable ready-to-wear garments business in four years with top brands such as Wrogn and Imara. Her next goal is tough: to be profitable. When Anjana reddy came back to india in 2011 after a postgraduate degree in the U.S., she wanted to follow up on a business idea that struck her when she was in college. She wanted to set up a branded memorabilia business.
In the U.S., sports collectibles such as sports team jerseys and baseball cards are a multibillion-dollar industry. reddy took a fancy to the idea. She figured that india with its huge cricket-crazy population and sporting stars like sachin tendulkar would be an easy market. A friend set up a meeting with a local partner of California-based venture capital firm Accel.
Reddy, then 24, pitched her idea of selling sporting memorabilia to cricket-loving Indians. mahendran Balachandran, who she met at Accel, listened patiently to her presentation. He told her that her idea was impressive and he would invest in her company on one condition: She needed to rope in a celebrity to give her business immediate visibility.
