How Magic Needles is weaving a new future for women

In 2011, Heena Patel suffered a huge personal loss—she lost her six-year-old daughter to epilepsy. The period that followed saw her in a depressive phase while also trying to conceive again through IVF. 

A banker with impressive stints at Fullerton and ICICI, Heena took a break from work when she became pregnant with her twins. To have some sense of normalcy, Patel turned to knitting—a skill she had learned in her teens.

“On a lark, I ordered a few needles and yarn. I knitted a sweater with basic knowledge of stitches. I started buying kits, and soon, knitting became my solace and escape. When the twins started playgroup at two-and-a-half, I turned to knitting again after a gap and started learning crochet, too, through YouTube videos,” she tells HerStory.

What began as a healing hobby for Heena during one of the darkest periods of her life has now grown into Magic Needles, an enterprise that uplifts hundreds of women across India.

She started initially making headbands and caps, with the determination to create one product per day. After a hiatus, she joined a WhatsApp group of friends and shared pictures of her twins in her creations. 

Her friends insisted that she share her creations on Facebook. Her husband, Kalpesh, set up a page for her, and the response was overwhelming. “I had been off Facebook for a long time, but the day I posted pictures of a few caps, I got 800 responses.”

The same year, baby and mom care brand FirstCry took notice and invited Patel to feature her designs on the platform—marking the birth of Magic Needles.

Her first reaction was, “I am the only person making these products. How are we going to handle this?”

Kalpesh, a brand and marketing expert who worked at Baazi, HSBC, UBS, and Godrej, was determined that Heena moved beyond “the lady next door who crochets and knits” image to build a brand of her own.

“A friend would shoot my twins in the different creations, we would upload the images, and I was the only one making them,” she says.

Empowering women, one needle at a time

As demand surged, Heena and Kalpesh decided to expand their impact by training women from underprivileged backgrounds.

One of the first women to join Heena's team was her former house help, Priya, who had left her job due to pregnancy. “When she returned, I told her I didn’t have housework for her anymore, but I asked if she’d like to join my business instead,” she shares. 

Hesitant at first, Priya soon learned the art, and her excellence has made her one of Heena’s “most trusted artisans and has helped train many others.”

“We never imagined this would become a business. It was a way to keep Heena engaged, but when we saw the impact it could have on other women, we knew we had to take it further,” says Kalpesh, Co-founder of Magic Needles.

While Priya reached out to more people, Heena tapped into the skills of the women residing in a slum near her home in Vikhroli, a suburb of Mumbai. 

Priya, one of Magic Needles’ first employees, shares her story of change. 

“I did not know anything about knitting or crochet. Ma’am taught me everything from scratch, and I started working from home. After the pandemic, I started looking after warehouse operations and now lead a team of five people. I am financially secure and looking forward to learning computers and growing in the company,” she says.

At present, Magic Needles employs 300 women, of which 150 are from Mumbai, 50 from Himachal Pradesh, 50 from Kolkata, and the remaining from the rest of India, who produce over 1,400 SKUs.

The company follows a decentralised model, where artisans work from home, allowing them to balance household responsibilities while earning a dignified income. Women interested in joining Magic Needles either come through local community groups, partner NGOs, or by referral from current artisans. 

“These 300 women are managed by 20-25 leaders who lead the initiative, whom we meet occasionally and are trained through videos. In turn, they train other women,” says Heena.

Once trained, these women receive high-quality yarn and design specifications, ensuring consistency across all handmade products. Their finished pieces are checked for quality before being sold on various platforms, allowing the artisans to earn a fair wage based on their output. 

Magic Needles moved from baby products to teen and adult categories, bridging the gap between style and comfort. Heena remembers that initially, on-boarding on Myntra was by invitation only, 

“I kept manifesting for us to be on Myntra, and it eventually happened. We grew from one marketplace to another and are now available on Amazon, Myntra, and Nykaa Fashion.”

As Magic Needles evolved, Patels identified another gap in the market—the lack of high-quality yarns in India. Rather than relying on Turkish yarn as they had been doing since the company’s inception, they boldly launched their premium yarn brand, Hobby Store.

“Why should Indian artisans always rely on imported materials? We decided to create world-class yarns right here in India at affordable prices,” says Kalpesh.

Expansion and challenges

Launched in August 2022, Hobby Store offers premium-quality yarn in different variants manufactured in India by contract manufacturers. The brand’s eco-conscious approach also includes recycled yarns and cotton variants.

Its 1,500 sq. ft. experience store in Mumbai is more than a retail space—it’s a creative hub where customers explore, learn, and engage with the world of knitting and crochet.

“When customers walk into our store, they don’t just buy yarn; they experience a world of possibilities,” says Heena. The husband-wife duo hope to replicate it in cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad via a franchisee model.

Scaling Magic Needles came with its own set of challenges. One of the biggest hurdles was convincing customers to pay a premium for handmade products in a market flooded with mass-produced alternatives. 

"Many people don’t understand the value of handcrafted work. They compare it with machine-made products and question the price," says Heena. Additionally, sourcing high-quality yarn initially depended on expensive imports, making cost management difficult. 

Training artisans was another challenge—many women had never worked outside their homes before, so instilling confidence and maintaining consistency in craftsmanship required patience and structured mentorship. Logistics and distribution also posed issues as demand grew beyond what a home-run business could handle.

With 92,000 monthly active users on its website, Rs 8.5 crore revenue (FY23-24), and a 40% YoY growth, Magic Needles has proved itself as a business rooted in passion and purpose.