Mother Earth is facing environmental changes due to the day-to-day increase in pollution and the ignorance towards maintaining an eco-friendly lifestyle. This is happening because we as a society are not aware of how we are making our mother Earth suffer. It is not always about how maintained we are in terms of our food habits or health, but it is also about how much aware we are about the garments we wear. Often, we empty our wardrobes by discarding our old clothes without thinking about what happens to them next. Bringing a change in this aspect with the aspire to deliver eco-friendly clothes for women and help the Earth breathe better, Radhika Garg founded Handme in 2021. “I had studied in detail how the fashion industry is polluting our nature. This has made me realize that adopting a new approach towards sustainability is the solution. Therefore, I started my company Handme with the mission to preserve the safety of our Mother Earth by providing sustainable and eco-friendly clothes without changing customer preferences and the fashion trend,” Radhika says. Being a mother of a toddler, it is not very easy for her to fulfill her dreams and give society the best that it deserves. But, her passion for fashion and her dedication to bringing a change in the fashion industry through her unique innovation of selling biodegradable clothes to her clients have made her overcome all kinds of challenges coming her way. “I have always aimed to design refreshed fashion clothes for women through the greenway where customers are incentivized for making a contribution to the environment with our buy back initiative. Our brand believes in a zero waste approach where all pre consumer and post consumer wastes are either recycled or upcycled ensuring minimum carbon footprints,” she adds. Therefore, addressing all her personal and professional needs she dedicatedly becomes the power and strength of her company, Handme.

A Unique Approach Of Producing Eco-Friendly Fashion For Women
Being a naturally derived clothing shop, Handme makes all sorts of contemporary and Indian women outfits instilling premium quality of 100% natural and biodegradable fabric. The company believes in refreshing a wardrobe in the greenway where customers are incentivized for contributing to the environment with its unique buy back initiative. It offers an array of women's wearincluding ethnic, contemporary, and Indo western categories. For this, it procures sustainable fabric for ethical manufacturing of products and delivers it to its customers in sustainable packaging. It selects premium natural fabrics from authentic suppliers and all those fabrics go through certain tests to ensure the authenticity of natural fabrics. “Our packaging is handcrafted and made up of highquality natural fabrics that are fully sustainable. We use the entire wastage in the form of preconsumer and postconsumer waste which are either recycled or upcycled to ensure no pollution to the environment,” Radhika confirms. Handme also ensures that discarded clothes do not go to landfills, instead, these clothes are bought back and recycled or upcycled for preserving the purity of our environment. It also procures 100% natural fabrics from premium fabric suppliers across the country at premium rates, if needed.

“We are here to design trendy clothes for the women of the era that too without being harmful to nature. We at Handme thus have chosen organic over non-organic fabrics keeping the style and the trends intact. Also, there is no compromise on style or taste when it comes to fashion. We take proper care and make choices to keep our environment unharmed,” Radhika proudly states.

Recycling Or Upcycling For Sustainable Fashion
Sustainable fashion is another area where Handme excels. Since pollution is a big problem on earth today, Handme’s sustainable fashion brand is trying to solve this problem without changing the style that the customers demand. Eco-sensitive customers often face the problem of refreshing their wardrobe in a truly sustainable manner. They don’t know what to do with their old discarded clothes and want to upgrade their wardrobe without discarding old clothes for polluting the environment. Handme is trying to solve this problem of guilt free shopping and sustainably curating their wardrobe through our buy back concept.

Handme makes all sorts of contemporary and indian women outfits instilling premium quality of 100% natural and biodegradable fabric

With this buy back policy, customers return old clothes to the company and enjoy payback through it. All the returned clothes are then recycled or upcycled ensuring no pollution to the environment. Since these clothes are manufactured of natural fabrics with premium quality, they are comfortable as well as durable to use for many years. Adding to her previous comment, Radhika also says, “if someone is bored of wearing our clothes for a longer time then those can be returned to us without any hesitation. We correctly know how to reuse those through recycling.” It becomes a win-win deal for the customers where they get incentivized for contributing to the environment as they can simply return the old clothes while sitting at home and enjoy lucrative rewards.

Radhika believes that donating clothes to those who are in need and who can use those for recycling instead of throwing those in the trash is a way to protect the earth through upcycling. Many businesses however find this non-essential but Handme has proudly taken this process as one of the best ways to help the mother earth breathe.

“For us every fiber matters. We get natural fabrics from reliable and trusted suppliers across India, ensuring that every garment is recycled through cutting edge technology and proper testing. We also ensure that those are biodegradable and no usage of synthetic or polyester approaches takes place. Our ecofriendly recycling process eliminates chemicals while recycling the used clothes. The use of natural fiber makes it simpler and our clothes’ natural composition is free of artificial dyes or chemical finishes, eliminates toxicity from the entire process making recycling less complex,” Radhika states. Stylish, biodegradable, zero synthetic usage and recyclable processes for cloth making are blindly followed by Handme.

The Team
Armed with a team of fashion experts coming from big fashion institutes, Handme’s workforce is confident and dedicated to bringing the best to the plate. The team is well trained in understanding the fabric and Radhika strongly believes in ethical work practices in terms of workers’ payment and company culture. She being an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad knows and understands who is needed for her team. Empowering women in the work field are also something that Radhika supports and thus hires women fashion experts for her company. Keen to work for the society with an unimaginable new process of encouraging eco-friendly clothing business, Radhika has witnessed good growth within a short span from Handme’s establishment.

The Future
Handme has witnessed a month on month growth of more than 20% since its launch. “Our brand is doing extremely well in terms of footfall. We are proud to witness a huge footfall on our webpage every month and our store comes under the top 2% in terms of traffic generation on the Shopify store. However, we want to focus on organic growth going further and educate our customers about sustainable clothes and how that helps in the eco balance,” Radhika states. With a strong eco system of the sustainable supply chain, quality driven products, marketing strategy, customer delight, and customer advocacy, Handme also wants to amplify its value proposition and increase its sales. “With an omnichannel marketing strategy, we plan to launch our brand Handme on different marketplaces like, Nykaa Fashion, Myntra for Earth, Amazon, etc. in the years to come,” proudly concludes Radhika.