Keeping the hopes high amidst COVID-19: Yash Dongre

Closely following the norms of the ongoing lockdown and WHO rules, House of Anita Dongre also announced the production of cloth masks for distribution to contribute further in the fight against COVID-19. After receiving adequate permissions from Government authorities, production of these masks was started in April across two of the five rural village centres that were initiated in collaboration with the Maharashtra State Government 4 years back, starting with Charoti. Through these centres, The Anita Dongre Foundation trains women to make garments and has set up a production facility close to their homes to bring gainful employment to them. These centres have had voluntary participation of about 24 women who were able to create up to 7,000 masks each week for distribution to NGOs, village residents, individuals, and hospitals. Keeping these initiatives in the backdrop, Apparel Resources wanted to understand further about business and how the sudden pause in business with COVID-19 has affected the brand. Yash Dongre, Business Head, House of Anita Dongre Ltd., informs us, “The lockdown has been a very challenging phase for retail. Stores were closed for around 2 and a half to 3 months, and even now, some of our mall stores are closed. Fortunately for our brand, we already had an online presence pre-COVID-19, so it was a lot easier for us to scale up. Thus, we put our whole energy there; we strengthened our business within the online space, started bringing in more technology partners to improve our customer experience, and we’ve been seeing a very healthy growth in our e-commerce numbers.” For the full interview, click @ Apparel Resources