Chikankari, Beyond the Kurta

Sunita Singh reports ₹70,000 and counting for Riyana Chikankala this quarter, built without paid advertising, while pushing a craft usually sold as women's occasion wear onto men's and kids' rails.

Ask most people to picture Chikankari and the same image comes back: white thread on pale cotton, a woman's kurta, worn once in a season of weddings. The craft carries generations of Lucknow behind it and a fairly narrow shelf in front of it.

Sunita Singh is working on the shelf.

Her brand, Riyana Chikankala, sells handcrafted Lucknowi Chikankari out of Noida, and she describes it as slow fashion: authentic craftsmanship, hand embroidery, pieces made at the speed the needle allows.

What separates it from a straightforward revival label is who she is willing to sell to. Riyana now runs women's, men's and kids' categories, with the stated aim of becoming a family destination for the craft rather than a womenswear line with a gifting section attached.

The figures she reports are early but pointed. Riyana has crossed ₹70,000 in revenue this quarter with the quarter still running, she writes, and its Instagram audience stands at 1,253.

Neither number is large on its own. What makes them worth reading together is what sits behind them. She reports building the business without depending heavily on paid advertising, which means the revenue traces back to people who found the brand rather than people who were bought to it.

That is the slower road. It is also the one that tells you whether the product is actually working, because there is no ad spend covering for a weak repeat rate.

The brand has stepped off the screen too. Singh reports participating in exhibitions, and at the Fashion Business Summit in Goa she was named a Fame Warrior, a recognition the summit gives for reaching ₹3,00,000. For a craft label, the offline room does something a feed cannot. Chikankari is a texture before it is a product, and the decision to buy often happens in the hand.

"My focus is to strengthen Riyana Chikankala as a family-focused Chikankari brand."

Within Unhu, Singh sits on the Core Committee. She was earlier part of the Growth Circle Team, working on community growth and founder engagement, and now contributes to the Media Team on communication and storytelling. She writes that the community has given her practical insight from other founders, different approaches to the same business problems, and collaborations she would not have reached alone.

The plan ahead is unglamorous by design: raise online sales, deepen the men's and kids' categories, improve customer retention, and build a channel that runs offline and online at the same time.

Retention is the interesting one. A wedding-season kurta is a single purchase. A household that wears Chikankari across three age groups comes back, and that gap is the difference between a craft brand and a craft business.

Key Takeaways

• Category expansion can double as a retention strategy. Selling to the whole family turns an occasion purchase into a recurring one.

• Growth without ad spend is slower, but it gives you an honest read on whether the product is working.

• For texture-led products, exhibitions are not a side activity. They are where the buying decision often gets made.

• Community roles compound. Committee work builds the network that paid reach cannot buy.

~Editor Shobhit Mehandiratta