Abhishek Agarwal, the 33-year-old Founder of Purple Style Labs—which owns luxury fashion stores Pernia’s Pop-Up and Wendell Rodricks—is not your typical IITian. “The thing about IITians is that they are all very similar. But I did not enter IIT like a typical IITian. Belonging to a business family from a small town, I spent my teenage years shopping and dressing up. I just happened to land in IIT,” laughs the IIT Bombay alumnus.
Agarwal has always been passionate about two things—fashion and cars. While he made one his calling, the other is his love. “I didn’t want to buy just any car. I was willing to wait, as long as my first car was one I really wanted,” says Agarwal. So, while most start-up entrepreneurs purchase a mid-level sedan or SUV as their first car, Agarwal bought the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class S 680 in March last year. “I set up my company in 2015 and waited seven years, travelling around in a rented Innova, till I had the means to buy the Maybach,” he says. While he booked the car in March, he only got delivery of it in December. So in July of last year, he bought the Maserati Levante. “I am not much of a sports car fan. The idea is to buy cars that combine performance with luxury. A sports car will always be a showpiece; [it] will hardly see the light of day,” says Agarwal. Next on the cards for him are the Ferrari Purosangue and the Lamborghini Urus, but they both have very long wait periods. “I would also like to buy a Bentley. They have started modernising themselves,” he says.
He loves to drive his cars on Sunday mornings when the roads in Mumbai are relatively empty. He says while he bought the Maybach thinking he would sit in the rear, once he drove the V12 engine-powered car, he was hooked. “The sheer power of it! I now find the V9 Maserati rather weak,” he laughs.
Agarwal says his company is doing sales of approximately Rs 50 crore a month, with 40 per cent of the sales coming from online. He currently has 16 Pernia’s Pop-Up Studio stores and three Wendell Rodricks stores. Nearly 80 per cent of his online sales are from outside India. “That’s because we have only one store in London. When we have opened more stores globally over the next few years, this percentage will go down.” In June last year, Purple Style Labs raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Akash Bhansali and Madhuri Dixit. Agarwal says the company hopes to close the 2022-23 financial year with gross sales of Rs 750 crore.
@smitabw