Designing social impact

Swati Rai

GAGAN and Neeti Jain are the founders of one of a kind, online design house, RangRage. It is a one-stop-shop for hand-painted apparels, accessories and home décor. While supporting a whole community of artists, RangRage caters to the fashion needs of men, women and kids across apparel, accessories and home décor. Besides a team of core artists and designers, the company is associated with a number of artists, who work on a freelance basis.

The RangRage team comprises housewives, art students, teachers, and even film poster painters. The company is happily creating social impact through a business enterprise that is guaranteed to serve only exclusivity to its customers. Co-founder Neeti Jain has also co-authored the book The Start-up Diaries. The company was founded with the objective of providing a platform to the huge latent workforce of women who have a flair for painting and artwork but do not get an opportunity to exhibit it.

Gagan adds, “The training we give exposes them to various forms of art. We conduct classes once a week in villages and provide the local artists with basic material.” The team helps the artists get market ready by training them to paint on T-shirts, shoes, jewellery, jeans, bags, accessories, etc.

“We generally train them on one or two surfaces initially, and give them work of those products only”, adds Neeti.

Gagan tells us about the post-training process, “It generally takes six to eight weeks of rigorous practice. Members of our team visit these villages and spend eight to 10 days. Even after 10 sessions, we hand hold them till the time they achieve the commercial benchmark. The trainees keep practising before working on any order at our office where they can seek assistance from in-house trainers.”

On how the idea of RangRage came about, Gagan says, “It was struck purely by chance. We were living in Oman and had cushy jobs. Neeti loved to paint, and once she painted one of my denims that I wore while on my trip to Paris. The denim was a head-turner and was greatly appreciated. I immediately called Neeti and shared the joy. Thus, the idea of RangRage was born.”

They decided to take this idea a step further and go about it in a professional manner. They bought plain T-shirts and identified the designers and designs to be painted.

“After a few months, we received our first consignment of painted T-shirts. The response for hand-painted T-shirts was very encouraging. We sold all of these within a few months.” However, when the couple approached the artists again with a second lot three months later, most of them had given up painting citing a reason that “artists have no value in India”.

This statement convinced Gagan and Neeti to relocate to India to work on their dream project. At RangRage, Gagan and Neeti help artists in their team in a three-pronged way — education, empowerment and earning.

Neeti elaborates, “We train and educate them about various forms and styles of art. Most of our painters are housewives. We nurture them and turn their raw skill into polished talent. This helps them gain confidence and empower them to dream big. They also get an opportunity to earn through their hobby. Our freelance model allows them to work according to their convenience.” Some of our painters now earn Rs 12,000 to Rs 14,000 every month, she adds.

Sustaining a dying art of painting and positioning it in the global market in a socially responsible way is where the heart of RangRage lies!