Maya Varma of Teejh on Blending Tradition and Modernity in Jewellery and Fashion for the Modern Indian Woman
Year End Stories
StartupTalky presents Recap'24, a series of exclusive interviews where we connect with founders and industry leaders to reflect on their journey in 2024 and discuss their vision for the future.
The Indian fashion market in India is expected to grow by 10.65% from 2024 to 2029, reaching a market volume of USD 24.35 billion by 2029. This growth is the result of changing consumer preferences, with an increasing demand for versatile and accessible ethnic fashion that blends tradition with contemporary styles.
In this edition of Recap'24, we highlight a brand that is making its mark in the ethnic jewellery and saree industry, Teejh. Teejh offers high-quality, everyday wear that celebrates both heritage and modernity. StartupTalky had the privilege to connect with Ms. Maya Varma, Co-founder and Chief Brand and Product Officer of Teejh, who shared how the brand started with oxidised jewellery and has since expanded into a complete lifestyle brand. Varma discussed Teejh’s focus on creating products that reflect the modern Indian woman’s style while staying rooted in tradition. She also shared the brand's expansion into new categories and its plans for continued growth in the years ahead.
StartupTalky: Teejh started with a focus on oxidised jewellery. Can you tell us what inspired this decision and how it reflects your vision of blending traditional Indian aesthetics with modern wear?
Ms. Maya Varma: Teejh is an ethnic jewellery and saree brand that celebrates the spirit of the modern Indian woman who effortlessly fuses tradition with contemporary style. Teejh was born from a deep-rooted connection to heritage and self-expression. Today’s progressive Indian woman confidently embraces both her roots and modernity.
Teejh began its journey specializing in oxidized jewellery, addressing a gap in the market where most Indian brands primarily focused on occasion-specific pieces. Recognizing the need for jewellery that blends traditional aesthetics with everyday wear, we set out to create pieces that carry the essence of Indian heritage into daily life. Most brands focus on providing heavy, blingy pieces that work well for festive occasions. We, on the other hand, wanted to create a brand where Indian elements in jewellery and sarees could be seamlessly incorporated into our customer’s everyday life. Our focus was to create products that are subtle, lightweight, easy to wear even with Western outfits, or can be worn regularly without any hassle.
StartupTalky: What new products have you added to your collection in 2024, and how do they align with your brand's philosophy?
Ms. Maya Varma: We have added 2000+ products to our collections in 2024. From being an oxidized jewellery brand, we have evolved into Indian jewellery and saree brand that has simplicity and everyday wearability at the core of our design philosophy. This year we launched 10-12 jewellery collections across oxidised and gold plated jewellery, 12-15 saree collections across different materials, expanded our clutches and dupatta range, and introduced saree belts as a new category. We added multiple pitaara styles (jewellery sets) to our collections which do very well for gifting.
This year one of our main focuses was to build our saree category as we strongly believe sarees should not only be an occasion wear attire, it has to be seamlessly integrated into our everyday wardrobes. Easy-to-wear block prints, soft comfortable mulmul sarees, flowy georgettes, and ready-to-wear sarees have become particularly popular in our range. This year we also forayed into light festive jewellery and sarees as well and received a very good response from our customers.
Ria Puneyani
StartupTalky: What sets Teejh’s oxidised jewellery apart, and how has your unique selling point evolved with the addition of new categories?
Ms. Maya Varma: We do a very curated selection of the styles we launch in every category. Every style is personally checked and selected by me keeping in mind the brand language and philosophy. Teejh’s oxidised jewellery stands apart because of our aesthetic designs, focus on details, indo-western appeal, and exceptional quality.
Every year we launch 5-6 in-house designed oxidised jewellery collections that are inspired by Indian history, culture, and craft but can easily fit into an indo-western wardrobe. Simple, wearable, versatile India-inspired traditional yet contemporary styles are what we believe our USP is. With the addition of new categories and varied collections, we have evolved into a more comprehensive lifestyle brand that completes the ethnic wear needs of any modern Indian woman.
StartupTalky: How has the jewellery and fashion industry changed in recent years, and how has Teejh adapted to these shifts in trends?
Ms. Maya Varma: Fashion is an ever-evolving industry and being a fashion brand we’ve always had to constantly evolve with the trends, customer demands, and market opportunities. We started with oxidised jewellery as we realized there was a gap in the market for simple everyday designs that blur the lines between traditional and contemporary. Stacking and layering have been globally popular jewellery trends in recent years and we implemented the same in our collections too through layered oxidised necklaces, stacked bracelet sets, stacked rings, etc.
In the past 5 years, we have seen customer spending patterns change and willingness to pay more for the right quality, leading us to explore different price segments of products. In the last few years thanks to Instagram and social media influencers, Indian women have been openly embracing sarees and Indianwear, which lead us to explore the opportunity and foray into the saree category.
StartupTalky: Can you share an example of how staying ahead of trends has shaped your product offerings or marketing strategies?
Ms. Maya Varma: Indian jewellery is generally very trend-agnostic from a design perspective so instead of trying to build the brand based on trends, we usually focus on customer demands and creating the right product range for a modern Indian woman’s ethnic sensibilities. Having said that in terms of products, our stacked bracelets and pre-curated Pitaara sets are one-of-a-kind offerings that evolved from the layering trend. We also offer Tjori sets which are stylized saree, jewellery and clutch sets that define a complete look.
In terms of marketing strategy, in 2020 we started a series on our Instagram page & website called #IAmTeejh, which is an attempt to celebrate and talk about the Untold Success Stories of Modern Indian Women following their passion and chasing their dreams.
It's about their will and determination, their struggles, their achievements, and experiences that made them who they are. It’s an attempt to understand their inspiring journey and how they are blurring the lines between their modern lifestyles and traditional roots. We have shared stories of 25 inspiring women, worked with numerous Indian influencers, and built a very strong close-knit community of people who identify as #womenofteejh.
StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to measure Teejh’s growth and performance?
Ms. Maya Varma: We focus on the below metrics to gauge and measure growth:
- Revenue & Gross Margin Growth QoQ – Overall & Category-wise
- Basket Size, Average Order Value, Average Selling Price
- Repeat Buying Rate
- Customer LTV (Lifetime Value)
- Category-wise Contribution Margin
- Active Customers Growth Rate YoY
- Instagram follower Growth rate YoY
StartupTalky: What were the biggest challenges Teejh faced in 2024, and how did you overcome them?
Ms. Maya Varma: One of the biggest challenges we faced this year was longer supplier lead times owing to increased order volumes in both jewellery and saree categories. Some of our suppliers had to double their workforce to meet the growing volumes. Though a good problem to have, this led to untimely product stockouts and sales impact. We were quick to realize this and onboarded new manufacturers to split the load and kept introducing new styles so that customers have more options and sales don’t drop.
StartupTalky: How do you ensure repeat purchases and customer loyalty? Are there any retention strategies that have worked well for your brand?
Ms. Maya Varma: Our Retention strategy is broken down into 3 parts:
- Study and analyze customer profiles through internal data points and 3rd party tech tools such as Quickpass, Hotjar, etc, and build focused customer segments.
- Targeting customer segments with personalized communication and proposition via retargeted Google and Meta Ads as well as through Whatsapp API bots and promotions.
- Automated email and WhatsApp campaigns built around customer activity and engagements.
We will be launching Teejh’s Mobile app in Jan 2025, post which we will aggressively use the App as a focal source to drive stronger engagements and stickier retention.
Tanish
StartupTalky: What marketing strategies have been most effective for Teejh, and did you implement any growth hacks that worked well for you?
Ms. Maya Varma: Our performance marketing strategy is quite effective in terms of lucid communication, pleasing creatives, focused targeting, and high-yielding advertising placements. We strongly focus on the following key areas:
- Acquisition strategy that focuses on Bottom-of-the-funnel with above-par industry ROAS.
- Strong bias towards Instagram placements.
- Dynamicity of creatives and ad copies through Meta’s AI and Advantage+ engines.
- Usage of Influencer and creator fraternity collaterals to drive brand awareness and digital campaigns.
StartupTalky: How has Instagram, contributed to Teejh's growth?
Ms. Maya Varma: Instagram has contributed immensely to Teejh’s growth as we have been able to create a very strong community of Indian fashion lovers and enthusiasts who have been loving and constantly supporting us over the past years. For any fashion brand, visual representation of products and the brand’s identity is very important and Instagram has made this possible and accessible to a wide audience. Instagram ads also helped us reach millions of people and lead them to our website.
StartupTalky: What growth opportunities do you see in the jewellery and fashion industry, both in India and globally?
Ms. Maya Varma: The fashion accessories market in India is estimated to reach about US$ 10.6 billion by 2025 and to hit about US$ 20 billion by 2030 on account of the growing young population and rapid urbanization. We believe there is a huge demand for Indian jewellery and sarees globally as well thanks to a huge NRI population.
We aspire to become an Indian Fashion & Lifestyle brand emerging out of India with a global presence in the next 5 years. Tapping into adjacent product categories, adjacent customer segments, and adjacent markets is something we intend to do. We plan to go omni channel and strengthen our online marketplace presence, explore the offline retail space, and initiate International shipping in the next 1 year.
StartupTalky: As a founder, what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs starting a D2C brand based on your experiences with Teejh?
Ms. Maya Varma: As a founder, my advice to new entrepreneurs would be to trust your passion, be on top of your numbers, and be resilient and perseverant as true success takes time and a lot of hard work.
Explore more Recap'24 Interviews here.
Must have tools for startups - Recommended by StartupTalky
- Convert Visitors into Leads- SeizeLead
- Manage your business smoothly- Google Workspace
- International Money transfer- XE Money Transfer
