“I started in Akola because it was home – and because it gave me the space to build.”
When young founders speak about building fashion businesses in India, the conversation usually turns towards Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru. Pranjali Kharche made a different choice. She began The Mirari Life in Akola, her hometown in Maharashtra – not because it was the easiest place to build a fashion venture, but because it gave her room to begin on her own terms.
Akola offered lower overheads, more physical space and the emotional steadiness of being close to the people she loves. For Pranjali, remaining in her hometown was both a personal and a business decision. It allowed her to put limited resources into product development and artisan relationships rather than the cost of simply being present in a metro city.
Building from home, however, has not protected the business from the practical difficulties of operating outside a major commercial centre. Logistics remains one of the most persistent problems. A delayed shipment can hold up production and make a promised timeline difficult to meet. When a young brand is still earning customer trust, those delays carry a disproportionate cost.
Building the right team is another challenge. Fashion and textile work demands people who understand technical details, quality and the pace of production. Finding those skills locally can take time. Along the way, Pranjali understood that entrepreneurship from a smaller city involves more than a good idea: the founder must slowly create the network, systems and capabilities that a metro-based business may find more readily available.
Some of Pranjali’s most important lessons have come directly from customers. She noticed that people who had not arrived intending to shop would sometimes choose a piece after seeing and feeling its quality. The products may sit in a premium category, but interest in them was not limited to a conventional luxury buyer. Customers were willing to save for something they believed was distinctive, well made and worth keeping.
That behaviour changed her approach to the business. Instead of assuming that a young brand from a smaller city had to compete mainly on price, she began to see aspiration as a wider and more democratic force. The responsibility was to make the quality visible, communicate the value honestly and create products that customers could imagine owning and wearing.
The Mirari Life works with handloom and handmade textiles through an artisan network of more than 150 people across India. For Pranjali, this makes the enterprise about more than producing and selling garments. Every design decision has consequences for the maker, the customer and the way handcrafted work is valued.
Her goal is to build contemporary relevance around that work without separating the final product from the human skill behind it. This has required patience: developing products, listening to customers, coordinating production across locations and learning which parts of the business need structure before they need scale.
Participation in Indie Haat Delhi 2026 became an important moment in that journey. It brought an Akola-built venture into a national conversation on Indian textiles and gave Pranjali direct access to customers, B2B buyers, fellow entrepreneurs and people working across the sector. The value of the event was not limited to visibility. It helped her understand what buyers want to see, how expectations differ across markets and where future opportunities may lie.
During the event, The Mirari Life had the opportunity to welcome Shri Giriraj Singh, Hon’ble Minister of Textiles, to its showcase, and to interact with Neelam Shami Rao, IAS, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles; Tanu Kashyap, IAS, Director General, NIFT; and Dr M. Beena, IAS, Development Commissioner for Handlooms. For Pranjali, these meetings represented access to a wider ecosystem that can often feel distant when a founder is building from a regional city.
Pranjali’s experience has also clarified what must change if more young entrepreneurs are to build successfully outside India’s largest cities. Reliable transport, cost-effective options for larger consignments and better export logistics would allow regional businesses to grow without being forced to relocate simply for infrastructure.
For artisan-led enterprises, better access to export markets could also create stronger value for the people making the textiles. Pranjali wants growth to mean more than a bigger brand: it should also mean that artisans are recognised and paid fairly, and that handmade textile traditions remain viable for another generation.
Her journey from Akola to Delhi is not a story about leaving a smaller city behind. It is about proving that a founder can remain rooted in one, build patiently through its limitations and still enter a national conversation. For other young women watching from outside India’s metros, that may be the most meaningful milestone of all.
Pranjali Kharche
Pranjali Kharche is the founder of The Mirari Life, an artisan-led contemporary fashion brand based in Akola, Maharashtra. Through the brand, she works with more than 150 artisans across India and explores how handloom textiles can find a more natural place in modern wardrobes.
Website: https://www.themirarilife.com | Our story: https://www.themirarilife.com/pages/our-story | Fabrics: https://www.themirarilife.com/pages/our-fabrics
Founder contact: teams@themirarilife.com
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