While many entrepreneurs choose to build their businesses in Tier-1 cities like Bengaluru and Delhi, Supreeth Kashyap follows a different school of thought. The founder of the well-known apparel brand Wellbi has headquartered his company in Mysuru, Karnataka. In a conversation with HT.com, Kashyap opened up about his decision to live and work in a Tier-2 city, quitting his tech job for entrepreneurship, the mistakes he made on his way to building a profitable startup and more.
Tech job to entrepreneur
Born and raised in Mysuru, Supreeth Kashyap, 30, holds a degree in Computer Science from The National Institute of Engineering, Mysore. After graduating in 2017, he landed a job at Accenture in Bengaluru. It was a tech job that paid him a comfortable salary, but he never quite took to Bengaluru.
“That peace of mind was missing in Bengaluru,” he told HT.com in a conversation. “I specifically wanted to build something from Mysuru. In most metro cities, there is already so much crowd, traffic and constant pressure. Mysuru offered a different environment, with a better sense of space and peace, and I felt it was the right place to build something meaningful.”
Kashyap quit Accenture in 2018 and started consulting as a freelancer. In 2021, he launched Wellbi — an apparel brand focused on essential and athletic wear made of sustainable, organic fabrics.
Why he chose entrepreneurship
{{/usCountry}}Kashyap quit Accenture in 2018 and started consulting as a freelancer. In 2021, he launched Wellbi — an apparel brand focused on essential and athletic wear made of sustainable, organic fabrics.
Why he chose entrepreneurship
{{/usCountry}}Kashyap claims that his foray into entrepreneurship happened more by accident than design. His main motivation was the wish to generate employment in Tier-2 cities.
“Whatever I was doing in the IT industry was not completely satisfying. Like, I wanted to do something which would create meaningful employment opportunities, and apparel was the category which I ended up choosing,” he explained.
“I wanted to create opportunities in Tier-2, Tier-3 cities, rural India, where people don't migrate from rural India to urban areas. So, that was the motivation for me.”
The Mysuru-based founder today has over 15 full-time employees. His company works with another 40 artisans who are involved in operations like yarn-making, weaving and stitching.
From ₹10 lakh capital to ₹1 crore monthly revenue
Kashyap initially started Wellbi in 2021 by putting in ₹10 lakh of his own savings and money borrowed from family.
“I started with around ₹10 lakh, putting in some of my own money and taking some support from my family. Over time, I gradually built that into an initial investment of around ₹50 lakh as the business started taking shape,” he said.
The company raised around ₹3 crore from angel investors at the initial stage. Kashyap told HT.com that it clocked ₹6 crore+ turnover in FY 2025–26 and is now targeting around ₹15–16 crore in annual turnover, with a projected ₹16 crore by March 2027.
“We started doing about ₹11 lakh revenue in the first year, and we went ahead and did ₹70 lakh revenue in the next year. And then we did ₹2.4 crore in the next. Last year, we did ₹5.6 crore revenue. And now this year we will be doing about 15 crore, 15 to 16 crore per annum,” he explained.
The challenges of building a startup
The journey from ₹10 lakh as startup capital to ₹1 crore as monthly revenue was not without roadblocks. Kashyap acknowledged that he has made some mistakes along the way.
“I would call myself an accidental entrepreneur. Because nobody in my family has any business experience,” he said. “I would call myself very naive initially. I did not know much when I started, but I learned through the process and then acquired more skill sets.”
(Also read: ‘I messed up’: Founder apologises for offering job interviews to party guests willing to get tattoos)
One of his early mistakes was focusing too much on photoshoots.
“In the early days, I was very drawn towards fashion photography and thought that good photoshoots would help sell the product. But I realised that the product strategy has to come first,” he said. “You have to find your product market fit first.”
Kashyap’s second mistake was hiring too many employees, too quickly.
“When we were doing 20 lakhs revenue per month, we had about 13-14 people—14 people in the company. Now when we are doing 1 crore per month, and we have about close to 10 people,” he revealed.
“So the main mistake was we were not able to hire proper multitaskers… I was kind of hiring people for every role.”
The rewards of building a startup
For Kashyap, the challenges of running a startup pale in comparison to the rich rewards. And the rewards are not always monetary — for this 30 year old founder, appreciation from big names in the industry is also very rewarding.
Kashyap told HT.com of several founders who love Wellbi products.
“Ganesh Sonawane, founder of Frido, loves our pro,” he said.
He also mentioned Vivekananda Hallekere, the co-founder of Bounce, as being one of his customers. Besides this, the company has also supplied T-shirts to bigwigs like Meta and Zerodha.
The Mysuru-based founder now has expansion on his mind, with Wellbi soon launching on Amazon in the US. But he is quick to stress that Wellbi is not a fast fashion brand.
“We're not chasing trends. We want to just enhance comfort, breathability of the product you wear,” he explained.