Shark Tank Woman Founder on Building India's Only Men's Rental Platform

Most fashion startups in India follow a predictable playbook. Target women, stay online, chase VC money, expand distribution. Shweta Poddar did the opposite of every single one of those things.

She's a woman building a men-only fashion rental brand. She went offline when everyone was screaming "go digital." She bootstrapped to profitability when competitors were burning through millions. And her data told her something counterintuitive that changed everything - men are logical buyers when it comes to clothing, and that makes them early adopters of rental.

Shweta is a computer science engineer who worked at Akamai and HSBC before jumping into fashion. She started CandidKnots in 2015, serving both men and women, pivoted to CandidMen in 2018 by niching down to only men's rental fashion, and hit profitability in 2019 - all on just 10 lakhs of personal savings. Today, CandidMen operates six stores across Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Delhi.

In this episode, we explore how a technical founder cracked the men's fashion code, why going offline actually saved the business, what really happens after the Shark Tank cameras stop rolling, and how she survived COVID by moving all her inventory into her house and starting a pre-loved sale.

Key Takeaways: How to Build a Profitable Fashion Rental Brand

The Niche-Down Advantage:

• Men are logical buyers for clothing, women are emotional - this makes men early adopters of rental
• Narrowing from men + women to men-only brought profitability within one year
• Total investment was just 10 lakhs - niching down helped get unit economics right fast

Offline is Not Dead:

• Myntra's average order value was under 1,000 rupees when Shweta started; even now platforms average 3,000 in fashion
• For heavy occasion wear (sherwanis, tuxedos), people need to feel, touch, and see the fabric - physical stores build trust
• 80% of orders come from stores, 20% from the website - and website orders come from repeat customers who already trust the quality

Data-Driven Expansion:

• Store locations are decided by website traffic per city, search intent for industry keywords, and wedding density
• Benchmark formula: if Manyavar has X stores in a city, CandidMen can sustain at least X/10
• Manyavar has 60 stores in Bangalore, so CandidMen is opening their 4th there

Q: You started as a computer science engineer at Akamai and HSBC. What made you jump into fashion?

Shweta Poddar: The fashion problem was actually very personal for me. In India we have a lot of occasions, a lot of weddings, and it demands a lot of variety in heavy occasion wear. These are dresses you wouldn't repeat a lot of times. We asked a lot of our consumers - the most a person has worn an expensive outfit is three times. Less than 30% of people have utilized it three times, and a lot more just once or twice. Spending that much money on just once or twice as an occasion wear did not make sense. It looked very inefficient.

Also, fashion is the second largest polluter in the world. So rental solves two problems - it reduces unnecessary spending for consumers, and it reduces the pressure on manufacturing by utilizing the same outfit multiple times. For me this was a consumer inefficiency and sustainability problem which I was interested in solving.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The best businesses solve two problems at once. Rental fashion hits the wallet and the planet simultaneously.

Q: You put in 10 lakhs of personal savings with no safety net. Wasn't that terrifying?

Shweta Poddar: I wouldn't say I didn't have a safety net because I had 3 years of corporate experience before I started. So I always knew I can go back to a job if nothing works out. I have a simpler way of thinking - if there is nobody else financially dependent on you, it's a much easier, lesser risk to take. For a 26-year-old girl who did not have anybody else financially dependent on her, it came very naturally. It didn't seem like a very difficult choice at that point of time.

Corporate experience also gives you structured thinking. How does a big company work? You're sort of aligned in how you want your company to go in the future. Or how NOT to go - like, "these are the things I did not like about my job and this is what I will definitely not do in my own company."

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Your corporate job isn't a cage. It's a training ground. Use it to learn what to build and what to avoid.

Q: You started CandidKnots for both men and women, then pivoted to only men. How did that happen?

Shweta Poddar: When anybody thinks of fashion rental, they always think it makes more sense for women - you don't want to repeat outfits, right? I was with the same mindset. But luckily I found a designer in Bangalore who was only into men's. So I started both.

Once I started, I very soon realized through our data and consumer behavior that men are very logical buyers when it comes to clothing. But women are very emotional buyers. Because of this, men became early adopters of the concept of renting. Women is a very interesting market too - I wouldn't say it's not good. But for a bootstrapped company like mine, I didn't have bandwidth or enough money to build both segments well.

There was a point where I felt, let me do one thing properly instead of trying to be average at everything. So I committed fully to men.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Data doesn't lie, but it often surprises. Sometimes the "obvious" market isn't the best market for your stage.

Q: Narrowing down to men only, did that scare you? You're leaving 80% of the market behind.

Shweta Poddar: Narrowing our focus actually helped us get our unit economics right. 2017 we went live, 2018 I decided we'll do only men, and 2019 was the first year we actually went profitable. For us, narrowing the market actually brought more clarity.

The total investment in the company was just 10 lakhs of capital. I feel the women's market can be cracked, but it has to be cracked with faster rotatable cycles. When we probably become a little bit bigger, we want to explore women again - at that point we would have money and bandwidth to rotate it faster.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: You don't need a bigger market. You need a market where your unit economics work. One year from niche-down to profitability proves the point.

Q: You're a woman building a men's brand. Has that been a challenge or an advantage?

Shweta Poddar: I think it's a strength. If you see, women generally influence a lot of fashion decisions for men in their lives. Women are mostly making that fashion choice for their father, brother, husband, partner, boyfriend. So it's not something different that a woman is doing the men's segment.

We actually see this in our stores. Every city is different - I see a lot of mothers shopping for men in Delhi. That's not a pattern we see in Bangalore or Hyderabad.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The "outsider" perspective is often the founder's greatest asset. Shweta sees men's fashion through the lens of the people who actually influence men's fashion choices.

Q: You started online and moved to physical stores. Walk me through that decision.

Shweta Poddar: From an engineering background it obviously makes sense to start only online. That was my thinking as well. But from consumer feedback and seeing how consumers behave, we realized this is a business which needs some physical presence.

When I started, Myntra's average order value was less than 1,000 rupees. Even now, platforms like Ajio and these have an average order value of 3,000 rupees in fashion. Online works well for lower ticket value products. For heavy embroidery products, people still shop through showrooms and physical stores.

In rental, people want to feel, touch and see how the fabric is because for them, when they think "it's rental," they want assurance about the quality. Physical stores build that trust.

Right now, we get around 20% of orders through our website. The pattern we've seen is a customer who has already visited us once or twice is more comfortable ordering online next time because now they know the quality.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Online-first isn't always the right play. When trust is your product's bottleneck, physical presence isn't a cost - it's a conversion tool.

Q: How do you decide where to open your next store?

Shweta Poddar: We track website traffic - since we have an online platform, a lot of people from cities where we're not present keep checking out. We track how many people are coming from which city, what's the top performing. Based on that we decided to open Hyderabad and Delhi.

We also see search intent for industry-specific keywords - which cities are hitting that particular search intent more. And we look at wedding density by city.

Internally, we've come up with a benchmark: if Manyavar has X number of stores in a particular city, we can open at least X divided by 10. So Manyavar Bangalore has around 60 stores - we're safely assuming CandidMen can survive at least six stores in Bangalore. Next month we'll be opening our fourth store there.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Benchmarking against the category leader gives you a sanity check floor. If Manyavar needs 60, you need 6. Simple math, bold conviction.

Q: How do you handle fraud and theft in a rental business?

Shweta Poddar: We collect a deposit from customers. We don't collect a huge amount because we've seen that when you collect a huge deposit, that reduces people ordering as well. So we have a simple policy - if your rental is 1,000 rupees, your deposit will be an extra 1,000, not more. You pay double, and when you return the dress you get half the money back.

We also collect ID proofs and take a screenshot against each order. That sort of deters fraud for us - our fraud percentage is even less than 1%.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Simple, fair policies beat complex ones. Match deposit to rental value, collect ID, and your fraud drops to almost zero.

Q: You don't do delivery anymore. How does that work?

Shweta Poddar: Till 2019 I was doing delivery. 2020 and 2021 was COVID anyway. 2022 was when we started showrooms, and after a year I stopped doing delivery. I can't be everything for everybody.

Our model is simple - you order online, you pick it up, or you pick it through Porter, Dunzo, any service at your convenient time. You return it the same way. We don't even do cross-city delivery. If you're in Bangalore, you get a collection from Bangalore only. You do not get cross-city delivery because that's another layer and it makes things way more complicated.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Simplicity scales. Complexity kills bootstrapped businesses. Cut what complicates, even if it feels like leaving money on the table.

Q: How was your Shark Tank experience?

Shweta Poddar: Shark Tank experience was really good. Building this company has been quite difficult because rental fashion in general had a taboo. It took some time for people to accept it and understand that there are companies trying to build it in a better way for the future.

I started it in 2017, made it profitable in 2019, was very excited to scale, but then 2020 happened. 2022 is when I started pushing again. The journey has been very difficult and for me it has always been about so much hustle. But when I went to Shark Tank, the judges appreciated it. They said the execution has been very good.

That gave a kind of validation I didn't know I needed. One of the moments which was not telecasted - Anupam Mittal just got up from his seat and said, "I just want to shake your hand because what you have done is really great." That was very meaningful to me.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Sometimes the biggest value from Shark Tank isn't the deal. It's having five seasoned investors validate years of solitary hustle.

Q: How did you survive COVID? No weddings, no rental business.

Shweta Poddar: That was a crazy difficult time. January 2020, I had just signed an agreement to move to a proper showroom. But the owner was kind enough to give me back my advance. I shifted all my products to my house.

We started a new system called pre-loved sale. Weddings were not there, so nobody was interested in rental. But we started selling suits that had gone through several rentals. We used to take full videos of each product to show if there's any tear or anything wrong, even the smallest thing. That's how we made ends meet.

A lot of staff adjusted too - we told them we'll give half salary now and once things start moving well, we'll pay the balance. That's how we sustained staff, and through the pre-loved sale we sustained some money for the company. That pre-loved sale is still running now - after a certain number of rentals, we move out the collection and sell to customers at a nominal price.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: COVID didn't just test businesses. It created new revenue models. CandidMen's pre-loved sale started as survival and became a permanent strategy.

Q: What's your advice for founders trying to break into an industry where they don't fit the typical mold?

Shweta Poddar: Easier would be probably joining as a job in that industry. Take a job in a relevant company where you learn from them. That would be the easiest way. Or else, just start understanding and thinking about what would be the smallest point to start, just do that much work initially, and then see how it grows. Because then you would learn and know better.

You can also study who all are the people in that industry and what they're doing. What is working for them? And where is the gap - in that particular industry, where are people not doing anything?

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Get paid to learn. A job in the industry you want to disrupt is the cheapest MBA you'll ever get.

Q: If an engineer came to you today saying they want to start a fashion brand, what one piece of advice would you give?

Shweta Poddar: For me, I feel fashion is not just about selling. At this day and age, we should take it as a responsibility also. As any budding entrepreneur or existing entrepreneur, we should always think about the end loop of our product also. If at this age we do not think about sustainability and utilization, then we are only adding to the problem. I would always advise that, keep that also in mind when you're starting anything - not just fashion.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Building a fashion brand in 2026 without thinking about sustainability isn't just irresponsible - it's bad business. Consumers are paying attention.

Final Thoughts: The Counterintuitive Playbook

Shweta's core philosophy: "Let me do one thing properly instead of trying to be average at everything."

The bottom line: Shweta Poddar built CandidMen by doing the opposite of what every advisor, blog post, and startup playbook would tell you. She targeted a smaller market. She went offline. She bootstrapped. She simplified her operations to the point where there's no delivery, no cross-city shipping, and no trying to be everything for everybody.

The result? A profitable, six-store business with less than 1% fraud, a clear expansion formula, and a brand that survived COVID by moving inventory into the founder's living room. In a world where fashion startups burn through millions chasing growth, CandidMen proves that profitability and simplicity aren't limitations - they're competitive advantages.

For founders watching, the lesson is clear: your constraints aren't holding you back. They're forcing you to find a model that actually works.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about CandidMen?

Shweta Poddar: You can find CandidMen in our six stores across Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Delhi. We're in Jayanagar, Indiranagar, and Rajajinagar in Bangalore, with Vijayanagar coming soon. Our entire collection is listed on our website - every single piece from every city. You can follow us on Instagram at candidmenofficial.

Final words: In a market obsessed with scale, speed, and funding rounds, Shweta Poddar quietly built something more valuable - a business that actually makes money. She proved that a 26-year-old woman with 10 lakhs, zero fashion background, and a willingness to follow the data can create India's leading men's rental fashion brand. The fashion rental industry still carries a taboo, but CandidMen is changing that one sherwani at a time. If you're sitting on a corporate job, wondering whether to take the leap, remember Shweta's math: your experience is your safety net, your constraints are your strategy, and sometimes the biggest market isn't the right market - the right market is the one where your economics work.