She’s easing the burden on women by rejigging their bras – with help from a few good men

The hunt for super smart coders – that’s one struggle most tech entrepreneurs moan about. Imagine how gargantuan the challenge would be if the product that needs coding is a bra-fitting app! This is what Arpita Ganesh, founder and CEO of Buttercups, laughed and lamented about when I met her at a women entrepreneurs get-together organized by Microsoft Ventures in Bangalore.

“I’m not a techie. So I need strong tech hands on board – but that’s largely a man’s world and men aren’t exactly queuing up to work on a bra startup,” she said. “̌Now you can imagine how tough fundraising would be. Try explaining the importance of a right bra to investors, most of them men.” That was on a September evening two years ago, a year after Arpita founded Buttercups. Her startup has come a long way since then.

Today the Indian online lingerie boutique announced a pre-series A round of funding from Snapdeal’s former chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran and existing investors – Kanwaljit Singh and Manoj Varghese. All men. It’s no mean feat.

Arpita Ganesh, founder and CEO of Buttercups. Photo credit: Buttercups.

Buttercups serves around 500 orders a month. It has an online bra fitting tool, but it also has two physical fitting rooms in Bangalore, its home base – in Indiranagar and Whitefield – where it serves a few thousand loyal customers.

Buttercups was the first lingerie brand to introduce the concept of a fitting room with trained staff in India. That proved a winner for it as 90 percent of women who visit the room turn into customers.

The startup sources lace and other material from Hong Kong and manufactures its lingerie there. Currently, Buttercups lingerie is sold only in India.

Freedom from barbaric bras

Romanian artist C. Cassandra talks of the best part of the day. Image credit: C.Cassandra.

This is something you wouldn’t understand unless you carry two weights attached to your chest, weighing you down, and raising unwanted attention a lot of times. Bras arrived more than a hundred years ago, offering to help, but since then many variations of it have been pinching half the earth’s population. No wonder women can’t wait to fling that bra as soon as they get home after work, school, or wherever else they can’t appear unhinged.

“Women just seem to grin and bear it. I spent years looking for a bra that fit me right, and that’s why I started Buttercups. I didn’t want to compromise,” Arpita said to my vigorous nods. “I want every woman in India to experience a bra that fits well.”

Few entrepreneurs have proved their tenacity and perseverance like Arpita did since 2013 when she started a bra blog – A Bra That Fits. She got a few thousand women around the globe to subscribe to it, ran a successful crowdfunding project to raise around US$6,000 from 200 women, and started building Buttercups.

Last year, angels Kanwaljit and Manoj, along with Angie Mahtaney and Sridhar Viswanathan, pumped US$1 million in it. That’s not a lot of money. Especially when online lingerie stores in India were burning millions to scale fast.

But what seems to have worked for Arpita is her customers who return and also bring their friends. Instead of blowing up cash on mass marketing, Buttercups stayed true to its mission – make good bras – and win ‘em over slowly and steadily.

Customers who return with friends

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