He Started a Wildlife T-Shirt Brand During Covid and Crossed 3 Crores in Revenue. Here Is How Jayesh Did It.

Jayesh did not set out to build a clothing business. He was already running things behind the scenes, figuring out print on demand in India when almost nobody was talking about it.

That was 2019. Since then, he has launched two successful POD brands, the Mawa Store and The Mad Riaz, crossed 3 crore in combined revenue, maintained a return-to-origin rate under 1 percent, and is now eyeing international markets. Both stores run fully prepaid. And he did it without a massive team, without taking on debt, and without being loud about it.

When I asked our community which POD stores inspired them, someone brought up the Mawa Store. That is when I knew Jayesh's story had to come out.

The Origin Story: Two Niches, Two Co-Founders, One Approach

The Mawa Store started during Covid. Jayesh was already running a print on demand store for the US market when a friend approached him. This friend ran a travel company and the industry was completely shut down. He had noticed that people in his community kept asking where to get the team's t-shirts. There was a clear gap. Travel and wildlife clothing in India, done well, with real designs. Jayesh had the experience. His friend had the idea and the audience. They launched together.

A year later, a second friend came along. He was a tabla player, passionate about classical music, and could not find any clothing that reflected his world. He looked around and found nothing. He had watched what happened with Mawa and reached out to Jayesh. That became The Mad Riaz, a brand built around Indian classical music and the culture around it.

The pattern in both cases is the same. Someone close to the niche sees a gap, knows the audience from the inside, and brings in Jayesh for the execution. That is how two solid brands got built.

Design Is the Product

In POD, the t-shirt is just a canvas. The design is what you are actually selling.

Jayesh thinks about design in a very specific way. His template: 60 to 70 percent of the shirt is a strong graphic, and 20 to 30 percent is a quote or text that emotionally resonates. The graphic makes it visually appealing. The text makes it personal. People buy these shirts because they want to feel like they belong to something. The design communicates that belonging without them having to say a word.

For research, he uses Pinterest and simply studies what is working in the market. But the best sellers have always been original ideas, not copied ones. The tiger design with the quote "May the forest be with you" is one of the Mawa Store's biggest sellers. Once that worked, he expanded it into a series. Tiger became elephant. Elephant became wolf. Now the whole series is a best seller.

That is the move. When something works, do not stop at one. Build a collection around it. It increases your catalog, raises average order value, and keeps the customer in your world longer.

On the design team side, Jayesh does not rely on one in-house designer. He works with multiple freelancers. The reason is simple: if you have only one designer on salary, after five or six months, every design starts looking the same. Same style, same color palette, same energy. Multiple designers give you variety, which gives your catalog depth.

Niche Selection: The Testing Approach

When people are starting out, Jayesh recommends testing multiple niches in a single store before committing. Pick five niches. Put five to six designs in each. Run ads. After a month, the data will tell you which niche is getting traction. Then you build a separate focused store around that winner.

His example of niches worth exploring: yoga, pets, gardening, food and beverages, and communities that are underserved in India, like LGBT+ pride merchandise. He has seen pride merchandise sell extremely well in India during June, and not just to the community itself. Supporters buy too. And almost nobody in India is doing this well. That is a real opportunity.

The key is that you are not guessing. You are testing cheaply, reading the data, and then going deep on what actually resonates.

Pricing: Test Your Way to the Right Number

When Jayesh started, he priced t-shirts at 699 rupees. It worked. Then he moved to 799. Still worked. He tested 999. Orders came in, but the ratio was not good enough. He settled at 899 and has stayed there.

His framework is simple. Whatever price you set, if one person comes to your website and buys a single product, you need to be profitable on that transaction. Calculate your cost of acquisition and your margins. If the numbers work at one price point, raise it slowly and see if conversion holds. When you find the ceiling, come down one step.

For India, every price point has customers. Someone will buy a 500 rupee shirt. Someone will buy a 2,000 rupee shirt. The question is what market you want to be in and whether your margins work at that market's willingness to pay.

Marketing: Aware vs Unaware

Jayesh breaks marketing down into two audiences, and the distinction matters.

The aware market is people who already know your niche. Wildlife enthusiasts already want a wildlife t-shirt. They see your ad, they like the design, they buy. Easy conversion. The problem is this pool is small. After a year or two, you exhaust it.

The unaware market is everyone else. The IT professional who never goes camping but secretly wishes he did. The person who does not play an instrument but admires musicians. These are the majority of people. And they do not buy for the same reasons.

To reach them, you have to shift your angle. Instead of leading with the product, you lead with a desire or a feeling. If you cannot go on an adventure, at least wear it. That script opens up a completely different pool of buyers. It is the same product, just positioned differently.

He also emphasized that in today's Meta advertising environment, it is less about targeting and more about creative volume. The algorithm finds the right audience if you give it enough strong creative to work with. His approach is to put 10 to 15 percent of revenue into creative production, including models, video shoots, and design variations. Multiple concepts, multiple formats, multiple variations per concept. The more you test, the faster you find a winner to scale.

Operations: From Third-Party POD to Local Vendors

The first three to four months, Jayesh used a POD fulfillment platform. Orders came in, the platform printed and shipped. Simple.

But problems started showing up. Delivery delays. Printing inconsistencies. When volume picked up, he needed more control. So he found a local vendor in Pune, explained the POD model, and built a direct relationship.

Now the process works like this: every morning, a sheet goes to the manufacturer with the day's orders. Shirts arrive at the office, get quality checked, get packed in branded packaging, and get picked up by Shiprocket for delivery. Clean, consistent, and faster.

Finding vendors is not complicated. Ask within your community first. Then search Google. Talk to four or five options. Test with a small order. Check quality and pricing. Commit to whoever performs.

The COD Question

Both of Jayesh's stores are fully prepaid. His RTO rate is under 1 percent. His margins stay clean.

But he is clear that he has left a significant chunk of the market untouched. Around 70 to 75 percent of Indian e-commerce customers prefer cash on delivery. That is not a small number.

His take: COD is a growth phase move, not a starting move. When you are just getting going, COD brings in orders but it also brings returns, two-way shipping costs, and accumulated unsold stock. Your cash gets tied up. Your margins disappear.

Build trust first. Stack repeat customers. Get to a point where people come back multiple times on their own. That is when COD becomes additive rather than destructive.

If you do want to test COD early, limit it to metro and tier-one pin codes only. The RTO rates are significantly better in those areas. You can also collect a small advance, something like a 50 rupee delivery charge, which psychologically commits the customer and reduces cancellations. And ship fast. If someone gets their order within a week, they are much less likely to refuse delivery.

Building Repeat Customers

Repeat customer rate for Jayesh's stores sits between 25 and 30 percent. His target is 40 percent.

What drives repeat purchases? Two things. First, product quality. People come back when they loved what they got. There is no shortcut here. Second, brand recall. He sends WhatsApp broadcasts every month. Not spam. Relevant updates, new drops, community content.

He also does offline events. Flea markets, cultural festivals, streetwear fests. He sets up a stall. This does something that digital marketing cannot: it lets you sit with your customer and hear them talk about the product in real time. The feedback you get from one afternoon at an offline stall is worth more than months of comment section analysis.

For The Mad Riaz, the plan is to approach music instrument shops directly. Put up a small display in their space. The people who walk into a sitar shop are exactly who Mad Riaz is built for. You are not paying rent. You are just placing your brand where your audience already exists.

What He Tells Anyone Starting Out

Try it. That is all.

Jayesh spent time considering dropshipping, network marketing, and multiple other paths before landing on POD. He tried them. He figured out through doing that printed clothing was the thing he could actually build and scale.

Do not wait for the perfect store. Do not wait for the perfect design. Do not wait until you understand every ad metric. List five designs, run some ads with a small budget, and see what happens. India has enough tools, enough platforms, and enough customers at every price point. The only thing missing for most people is the decision to start.