This year, 2026, the Mumbai based Bombay Shirt Company celebrates 14 years. It has been a slow and steady journey. From one brick and mortar store in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda precinct, the company has grown to 34 stores across 11 cities in India. The journey moves on with the company’s most recent launch of its second flagship store in Mumbai – The Den: a reimagined experiential retail space aimed at transforming the way men shop.
‘The Den,’ a 3,700+ ft2 retail space, still champions Bombay Shirt Company’s (BSC) signature custom-made process with stylists, fabric books, and an in-house tailor, and the full ready-to-wear line up – shirts, jeans, chinos, tees, knitwear and the just-launched winter-wear. What is different at The Den is that it offers a dedicated lounge space for men to unwind, hang out, and indulge – Nandan Coffee, brewed in-store, a premium grooming corner offering haircuts and head massages, a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Trumpet Shoes, where guests can design their own custom footwear and an Ice Cream Bar. “I wanted to try a different format where it is not all about shopping,” says Akshay Narvekar, founder and CEO, Bombay Shirt Company. “Men don’t want to shop. And if it is a transactional purchase they will go online. So how can we give them more? Why not give them more than just clothes,” he adds. Interestingly, the men’s grooming and ice cream are free. “We are not trying to make money from it; it is more about the experience. We are making money from the clothes. Everything else is a part of why you want to come here, and why you look forward to coming here,” says Narvekar.
There were many naysayers for Narvekar’s idea. “My personal focus was how to make this an experience that you don’t get in India,” he says. So are menswear stores not exciting enough? Well, there are very nice looking menswear stores but they are not perfect. There are nice looking apparel stores but can the experience be different from what you get anywhere else? This could happen only by taking a risk. So Narvekar took the risk and introduced The Den first at the brand’s flagship store at Kemps Corner in south Mumbai. After getting positive feedback on the Kemps Corner outlet, the Den was introduced at the second flagship store in Bandra last November.
Narvekar started the Bombay Shirt Company at the age of 29 years. He knew he wanted to start his own business, though at that time, he didn’t know what it would be. He enjoyed fashion and clothes. After completing his BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Narvekar honed his skills in Strategy & Operations at BCBG Max Azria. This experience gave him an idea how the industry worked. Besides, on his return to India, he often found himself going to the market, buying fabric, and taking it to the tailor as nothing fit him off the rack because of his height. Friends would often compliment him on what he was wearing. “I had to do the work of going to the market, buying the fabric, buying the buttons; it just felt like there was a better way of doing this. It still didn’t click that this could be a business,” he says.
In 2011-12, when businesses were coming online, Narvekar looked around to see if anyone was doing made to order clothes online. “That’s when a bell went off saying this is an intersection of something I know, something I enjoy, and a personal problem I can solve. Tailoring has a heritage of decades in this country, but it was all fragmented. Nobody was trying to build a brand, a consumer promise around the tailoring concept,” he says.
In 2012 it took Rs7 lakh of capital to start the business. This amount went towards setting up a 1,000 ft² karakhana, or workshop, with five tailors, a little bit of fabric stock, one room which Narvekar had and an assistant (who is still with him today). Business started online as Narvekar thought it was the cheaper way to do it. “I had no idea, and I found out much later, that it is the most expensive way,” he says in hindsight. The first six to eight months the business was purely online, and according to him, because the business was a first of its kind online, the company received a lot of press coverage, but “I don’t think we were making very good clothes to be honest. I understood the industry, but I didn’t know what it took to make a good shirt,” he says. Six to eight months down the line, he realised that the business would fail if he didn’t master shirt making. He also realised that touch and feel was very important in clothes. People want to touch and feel the fabric and get their sizing done in person, which meant that he needed to have a physical location.
In 2014, Amit Patni from the Patni Computers family invested in Bombay Shirt Company, and with this investment the company launched the brand’s first store at Kala Ghoda, and simultaneously opened a 1,200 ft² factory. During these early days of the business Narvekar spent the days selling shirts at the store, and at night, he found himself sleeping at his factory with his tailors, trying to understand each fabric supplier, every fabric, the buttons, the interlining, and everything that goes into making a shirt, and slowly started building the business back. A year later, a second store was opened at Bandra. Today the brand has 34 stores in 11 cities across the country.
Growth has been steady. In 2016, the company opened a 5,000 ft² factory, followed by a 20,000 ft2 factory at Vasai, on the outskirts on Mumbai in 2019. Besides the Vasai facility, the company has four other facilities which manufacture exclusively for BSC. The made to order, which is 60 per cent of the business, is made at the company’s own factory. The ready to wear, which accounts for 40 per cent of the business, is made at the other facilities.
For the first 10 years, BSC’s product range was only shirts. Typically, made to order is about formal wear. However, the business had to evolve, especially as Covid brought with it a change of dress code moving towards a more casual one. “Less people are wearing formal because of everything we know, but that was how the market was moving, so if we didn’t get into casual / ready wear which is a subset of each other, then we would have lost in the market,” says Narvekar. In 2022, trousers were added to increase the product mix. Jeans, chinos, tees, knitwear followed. Recently, the company expanded its product range to include jackets and t-shirts. Bespoke shoes by Trumpet have also been brought on board. For now, shoes are available at both the flagship stores in Mumbai.
Here, Narvekar is building a homegrown brand when many are moving towards luxury. Typically, made to order or custom made is equivalent to bespoke. Priced at Rs4,000, BSC is not your typical high street brand. Narvekar’s initial idea was for BSC to be a democratic brand, accessible to everyone. However, as the brand grew, so have peoples’ expectations of it, demanding better raw materials for each shirt. “Our pricing has been an evolution from our customer’s requirements over time. We just want to be the best product at the best price,” he says.
On the retail front, BSC has outlets in 11 metros in the country – Mumbai (10 stores), Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi NCR (9 stores), Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow and Pune. After having a presence only at high street locations for the first 12 years, malls were added just two years. Since then it has a presence at 20 malls. “Though it is more expensive in terms of rent, footfalls are much more in a mall,” says Narvekar. Plans are to have a presence at both high street locations and malls in future.
Narvekar is tight lipped to share exact turnover figures. “I can’t give the exact number but it is in the range of Rs100-200 crore,” he says. Mumbai, with the maximum number of stores, contributes the most to the company’s total revenue. In the last quarter of 2025, the company has increased the number of retail stores in Delhi NCR from three stores to nine. “Hopefully now we will see a much bigger contribution coming from NCR,” he adds.
Getting here hasn’t been easy. There have been learnings. According to Narvekar, the first mistake on his part was being a little hasty to start. “If I had done much more research on the product, I would have saved myself a lot of heartache later. But I was so excited to start a brand, start a product. Today, if anyone asks me what is the most important thing in starting a consumer business, I would say the product. Everything else is noise. You can have a nice store, but if the product is terrible it’s not going to work. You can have great marketing, in fact it can amplify that product. So product is everything,” he says.
Though Narvekar started as a solo founder, according to him, in hindsight, if he had a co-founder from day one, then things would have gone a lot faster. “Find somebody with complementary skills who can share the burden so things can move faster,” he says. Today, on the management side, Narvekar has a partner-cofounder who has been with the company for the last five years, and a team of 300 people. With a senior management team of 10 people, Narvekar’s role is more strategic today.
Learnings on the retail front is the location of the store. There is a big difference in the visibility a brand gets from its retail outlet being on the ground floor versus being on the first floor. Also, instead of spreading out to other cities too early, “I would try and saturate certain geographies or regions, get all the efficiencies of operations, marketing, etc., first and then move on to the next region,” says Narvekar.
Moving ahead, retail plans are two-pronged. One, is to go deeper into each of the 11 cities the brand is already present in. At the same time, the plan is to introduce The Den as a flagship store in each city. “You might sell in a mall, or at a smaller high street location somewhere else in the city, but can we build a brand in these 10-12 Indian cities, that’s the immediate focus,” says Narvekar.
More investments are coming in. According to Narvekar, the company has raised about Rs160 crore over the last 14 years. “Hopefully we will raise, not as much as that, but a large chunk in the next month. It will be a mix of primary and secondary investments, some early investors may get an exit and some ex-employees with ESOP shares may get an exit. Every time we do a round we make sure it is not just money coming into the company, but people who want to sell can also sell,” he says.
At BSC, the focus is on the domestic market for now, and Narvekar doesn’t want to lose focus on the prize. “The prize is we are an Indian brand that can make dent in the Indian market,” he says. (BSC had an outlet each in New York and Dubai pre-covid which were closed during the covid pandemic. It does ship its products overseas from its online store.) While eventually BSC can go overseas, for now the focus is on being a substantial player in the Indian market first, “otherwise if you start diverting focus you can lose everything,” he says.