Seven years ago, I made a handmade scrunchie for a friend who couldn't live without them. That was September 2019, and I was a business student with more curiosity than certainty about what I actually wanted to do with my life.
What started as a hobby — something to explore, learn from, tinker with — became something I couldn't stop thinking about. I was cutting fabric, stitching by hand, wrapping each piece carefully. My parents were around, helping where they could, cheering me on when I doubted myself. And I was delivering orders in person — between college lectures, during lunch breaks, right after class. I got to see people's faces light up when they opened their orders. That feeling of direct connection, of gratitude — it became the heartbeat of why I do this.
Back then, Scrunchit was just scrunchies and hair bows. That was it. But as the brand grew, so did our range. Today we make bows, claw clips, headbands, jewellery, charm accessories, and so much more — all still handmade, all still made with the same obsessive attention to quality that went into that very first scrunchie. The products have evolved, but the soul hasn't.
Eventually, we moved from hand-delivering to shipping pan-India. From a few orders a month to hundreds. From a college bedroom hobby to a registered business with an MSME certificate. Growth happened — quietly, steadily, on our own terms.
I also took on a full-time corporate job somewhere along the way. And yes, I still run Scrunchit. Simultaneously. Every single day.
I know that sounds like a lot. Some days it genuinely is. There are evenings where I'm packing orders after a full day of work. There are weekends spent planning launches, creating content, managing inventory. It's not glamorous. But it's deeply, completely mine.
Here's what balancing both has taught me though: you don't need to go all-in recklessly to build something real. You need consistency. You need to show up even when it's inconvenient. You need to care about the details when nobody's watching — the quality of the fabric, the strength of the elastic, the way the package looks when someone opens it for the first time.
We could've outsourced production to scale faster. We could've compromised on materials to cut costs. We could've chased every trend and launched a hundred products we don't believe in. But every time that option came up, the answer was no. Because the moment you compromise on what makes you you, you become just another brand. And there are already enough of those.
What keeps me going is simpler than any business strategy: customers from day one are still ordering from us. They trust the quality. They feel the care. They come back. That loyalty — that quiet, consistent proof that what we're doing matters — is worth more to me than any metric on a dashboard.
Seven years in, Scrunchit is still handmade, still quality-first, still deeply personal. And I think that's exactly why it's still here.
The eighteen-year-old me who started this with pure passion and zero certainty would be so proud. I'm going to keep making sure she stays proud — one stitch at a time.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting handmade. Thank you for being part of this story.
