Wardo | Introducing Sustainable And Circular Fashion Economy

• BySheetal Sidhu     |    June 9, 2021

“Introduce ‘Ikigai’, finding true happiness in life”, Arjan Sahni, Founder and CEO, Wardo told Startup story while indulging in a full-length interview explaining how ‘Ikigai’, a Japanese term meaning search of true happiness, was really important to ensure that treading the path to success is not short lived and doesn’t tire you.

 The Founder’s journey

Startup story asked Arjan to take us deeper into his journey and his relation with fashion and environment, to this the founder said that he has had a deep and old relationship with nature and preserving it, earlier at the age of 16 he set up a disaster relief NPO where he partnered with the RSS & an environmental awareness NGO which started the ‘Waste Bucket Challenge’, and headed several other initiatives to drive cleanliness in Delhi, that he said was his first experience as an entrepreneur which helped him realize that his ‘Ikigai’ was in ‘Impacting others, helping others brought him true happiness’. He later attended TCNJ to pursue computer science which he left to enrol in Singularity University where he discovered how technology could help him in the process of impacting a billion people.

Talking about fashion Arjan said that being a natural even at an early age of 13 years, he would give fashion advice to friends, understanding the true essence of its impact on one’s personality aligned with the concept of Enclothed cognition, a term understanding effect which clothing has upon a person’s mental process and the way they think, feel, and function, in areas like attention, confidence, or abstract thinking.

Arjan combined both his passions in one and merging these helped him develop ‘Wardo’, a word coined from the term wardrobe and focussed on circular and sustainable fashion economy used to change consumer behaviour for the betterment of the environment. Wardo has been recognized by various incubators including India’s accelerator, Startup India etc.

Wardo, polishing the service to near perfection

Arjan, earnestly shared the development stages his service had gone through in a chronological order with Startup story. Explaining the problem statement that they were bound to ward off in 2016, Arjan and his team had launched his first venture in the USA, which was a wardrobe management app. Giving us the statistics and understanding that an average woman spends 267 days deciding what to wear and a man spends 187 days on the same, he saw the need to counter the problem, however, despite having a set customer base he saw that the business model was neither sustainable nor revenue generating. Further, he dived deeper to improve his service and in 2018 came up with an AI recommended engine that would help people figure out their outfits on the basis of various factors including the weather etc. However, due to the operation cost and other reasons they pulled a plug on the project.

The turning point for Arjan was accompanied by gaining a deeper vision into the fashion industry after he visited an incubator in the Silicon valley he realized that the reason behind fashion being the second most polluted industry in the world was related to clothing underutilization, he learned that the statistics behind people reusing their clothes, according to the numbers in 2020 people repeat a cloth only 8 times while back in 1940’s people repeated a cloth 140 times. Working on the problem Arjan brainstormed the idea on how to increase cloth utilization and also massively help reduce the CO2 emissions of the fashion industry so he set up a platform where he could bring together stylists, makeup artists and the customers, the professionals could help the consumer to purchase pieces of clothing determining their body types, considering individual taste and personality and to make the most of what you already have this would enable them to wear the cloth for longer duration of time as well as understand more about the local disposal, up cycling and recycling options.

Customers: Review and feedback

When asked about how receptive customers were to Wardo’s services, Arjan said that initially he had received a great response in 2017 but due to the ineffectiveness of the service they had moved on to an AI based technology, which despite having 93% level of accuracy during the testing period only had 10% acceptance rate on going live and was laid off. So, he finally adopted a different methodology and came up with his final service which would be launching with 26 unique services, inclusive of capsule wardrobe, other tools of makeup artists and stylists in order to connect with the customers improvising personal and sustainable styling. Wardo is helping experts with styling digitally in a COVID world by giving them all the digital tools needed to get discovered, communicate with clients & deliver their services online as well.

Future plans and investment

When asked about the overall investment gained by Wardo, Arjan told Startup story that currently they had used their investment to make their soft launch a success, they are launching pan India and will expand into other  countries in later stages.

As for investors, Arjan said that they are on a lookout for investors and will be using the funding majorly for marketing; some portion would be utilized for product development, legal finance and other operation costs.

The team at Wardo

“You don’t necessarily need a huge team to achieve great things” Arjan Sahni, Founder and CEO, Wardo. He further elaborated with an example of Instagram, who were also a small team when they started off. Arjan told Startup story that he was currently working with a small team and most of the work they do is outsourced, the reason he believes in a lean model is because he could not find an appropriate cofounder who shared the same passion and zeal towards that he did. Arjan is quite satisfied with what he is able to achieve with the help of his team. He isn’t in a hurry but wants slow and steady growth.

Advice on managing stress

Arjan shared his secret of growth and improvement; he told Startup story that since a young age he has been meditating, having learned Vipassana, a meditation technique which means to see things as they really are, helps him stay in control. Arjan told us that it helped him excel in what he does. He has also been teaching underprivileged kids from government schools to meditate. “Unless you try you won’t learn, everything we went through was a lesson meant to be learned”, Arjan Sahni, Founder and CEO, Wardo

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