Meet the entrepreneur simplifying draping through One Minute Saree

As much as a lot of women love to wear a saree, the struggle to drape it to perfection is real. 

To help women flawlessly drape a saree, Sasha Revankar began One Minute Saree. As the name describes it, the Mumbai-based brand offers pre-stitched sarees that retain all of the saree's beautiful features, such as the flow, drape, and pleats but removes the hassles of pleating, pinning up and petticoats. 

“In easy words, it is a ready-to-wear saree that can be draped in one minute,” Revankar tells SMBStory.

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For the love of saree

Revankar, who grew up in the US, says she has always been fascinated by the myriad styles of sarees. During her frequent trips to India, she would always carry sarees to wear back home. 

One day, the all-too-familiar struggle to drape a saree without any help nudged Revankar to create One Minute Saree. 

She recalls seeing a friend wearing a pre-stitched saree bought from a boutique. The convenience of ready-to-wear sarees appealed Revankar. However, despite searching both offline and online marketplaces, she could only find poorly-designed pre-stitched garments, which didn’t do justice to the elegance of the saree. 

This gap opened a business opportunity for Revankar.

"In India, getting a pre-stitched saree designed in boutiques or finding one in retail stores is an option, but in the US, women don't have this convenience. I realised that if this concept could be brought to the States, women would be ecstatic, especially those who struggle with wearing sarees and live alone," the founder explains.

Revankar is a seasoned entrepreneur. She not only runs an ecommerce business that makes Indian handicrafts available to customers in the US but has also launched i2c World, an offshore business process outsourcing company with her father. This meant starting up a new venture was easy. 

“Starting up a business was not difficult because I have been doing the same for last so many years now, but the real struggle was to execute the idea of One Minute Saree to perfection as every women has a different body type, and giving a perfect fit to each body was a task that needed skilled craftsmanship,” the entrepreneur says.

Although the idea for the startup was conceptualised in 2020, it only took off in 2022 due to the pandemic. Revankar opened separate online stores for both the US and the Indian market, and tailors and masters in the production facility in Mumbai to work on her idea from India.

She says that the response to One Minute Saree has been overwhelming.

“We were positive since beginning that the pre-stitched sarees would be widely welcomed in the US but we were happy to see that Indian customers as well embraced our collection where we see young girls as our major customers,” Sasha reveals. 

The business and the vision

One Minute Saree presently has a variety of collections in nine different fabrics including silk, cotton, linen, georgette, and organza in various designs such as Kanjivaram, kalamkari, bandhani, sequins, and embroidered. The sarees are available on the occasion type and in three different shoulder draping styles like free-flowing, pleated, and Gujarati style. 

One Minute Saree starts from a price of Rs 1,500 and goes up to Rs 10,000. The price range varies for global and Indian online stores.

Since operations, One Minute Saree has catered to more than 5,000 orders so far. In FY 22-23, One Minute Saree clocked a turnover of Rs 1 crore.

All the sarees are sourced from vendors and artisans across India and are customised to suit different sizes starting from XXS to 4XL and over.

Despite an overwhelming response, Revankar says the challenge she is trying to overcome is to reduce the steps of customisation required for blouses. “Making a pre-stitched saree is still easy but it's the blouse that needs detailing so we're trying to make readymade blouses,” she says talking about the future plans. 

A collaboration with a renowned designer boutique is also in the works, the founder says without disclosing the name of the resort wear collection.