Anita Dongre built one of India’s biggest fashion empires, without losing her crafts spine

By any commercial measure, the House of Anita Dongre is one of the most successful Indian fashion businesses to have been built in the post-liberalisation era. The group spans an Indian western-wear chain (AND), a fusion-wear label (Global Desi), a couture line under Dongre’s own name, and a sustainable crafts brand (Grassroot), with retail across India and select stores abroad.

What makes the founder story interesting is less the size of the group and more the fact that it has stayed coherent. Dongre is rare among large Indian designers in that her business has not lost its design point of view as it has scaled.

Two sewing machines in a Mumbai bedroom

A graduate of SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai (Premlila Vithaldas Polytechnic), Dongre spent more than a decade supplying Indian wear to boutiques in the city before formalising her business. By her own widely retold account, in 1995 she started the company that would become the House of Anita Dongre with two sewing machines and a small rented space in Mumbai. The label was co-founded with her sister Meena Sehra and her brother Mukesh Sawlani, who built the operating spine of the business as it scaled. The brand that became AND grew from that early supply work, and through the late 1990s and 2000s built a national footprint of stores serving an emerging working woman’s wardrobe.

Global Desi, launched in 2008, extended the brief into fusion territory, Indian aesthetics rendered in everyday, easy silhouettes, and gave the group a second mass-retail engine. The signature Anita Dongre label, encompassing bridal couture, menswear and luxury prêt, followed in 2012, and the handcrafted jewellery line Pinkcity in 2013.

Couture, weddings and the Royal Wedding moment

Through the 2010s, Dongre’s couture business grew into one of India’s most-quoted bridal labels. Her work dressed multiple major Indian and international weddings, and she became one of the designers of choice for the new-money, tech-economy bridal market.

The crossover moment that took her brand outside the fashion press was widely reported when figures including foreign royals and global celebrities were seen wearing her work at major Indian events, which catalysed a step-change in the couture line’s international visibility.

Grassroot: the crafts spine

The most unusual part of the House of Anita Dongre’s architecture is Grassroot, a sustainable and crafts-led brand that the group has invested in for years. Grassroot works with weavers and crafts clusters across India, and is positioned as a globally exportable label whose value proposition is the integrity of the supply chain.

For most large Indian fashion groups, sustainability is a collection. For the House of Anita Dongre, it is a brand with a P&L. That structural commitment is what gives Dongre’s founder story a different feel from many of her peers.

A family business that scaled like a corporate

The House of Anita Dongre is also a story about family governance. Dongre runs the business alongside members of her family, with clear functional ownership, and has managed external investors at times in the company’s history. That blend, family business with corporate discipline, is uncommon in Indian fashion at this scale.

“You can grow a fashion business large. The hard part is to grow it large without losing what made it good.”

What founders can take from the Anita Dongre story

The deepest lesson is portfolio. Dongre did not bet on a single brand. She built distinct, complementary brands, mass western, mass fusion, couture, crafts, with shared operating infrastructure underneath. That structure is what allowed the group to weather mood swings in any one category.

For founders building in fashion or any taste-and-design-led category, House of Anita Dongre is a rare Indian example of a portfolio that scaled without collapsing into a single dominant brand.

Grassroot, and why brand portfolios beat single-brand bets

The House of Anita Dongre runs four distinct brands, AND, Global Desi, Anita Dongre couture, Grassroot, on shared back-end infrastructure (sourcing, design capability, retail systems) but with separate identities on the shop floor. Single-brand fashion businesses tend to be heavily exposed to taste cycles; a brand that is hot in 2022 may be tired by 2028. Portfolio architecture smooths that exposure: when one brand softens, another carries the group. For founders building in fashion or any taste-led category, the House of Anita Dongre is the rare Indian example of portfolio architecture done well at scale.

Frequently asked questions about Anita Dongre

What is the House of Anita Dongre?

The House of Anita Dongre is one of India’s largest fashion groups, anchored by multiple distinct brands rather than a single label. The portfolio includes AND (western wear), Global Desi (fusion wear), the Anita Dongre couture line, the sustainable crafts brand Grassroot, and Pinkcity. The brands operate on shared back-end infrastructure but each has its own design point of view. That portfolio architecture is what makes the company structurally interesting.

How did Anita Dongre start?

A graduate of SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai, Dongre spent more than a decade supplying Indian wear to boutiques in the city before formalising the House of Anita Dongre in 1995, with two sewing machines and a small rented space. The label was co-founded with her sister Meena Sehra and her brother Mukesh Sawlani, who built the operating spine of the business as it scaled. The brand that became AND grew from that early supply work and built a national footprint of stores serving an emerging working woman’s wardrobe through the late 1990s and 2000s. Global Desi, launched in 2008, gave the group its second mass-retail engine; the signature Anita Dongre couture label followed in 2012 and the Pinkcity jewellery brand in 2013.

Why is Grassroot important to the company’s identity?

Grassroot is the House of Anita Dongre’s sustainable and crafts-led brand, working with weavers and crafts clusters across India and positioned as a globally exportable label. For most large Indian fashion groups, sustainability is a collection inside a bigger brand. For the House of Anita Dongre, Grassroot is a brand with its own P&L. That structural commitment is what gives Dongre’s founder story a different feel from many of her peers, and is one of the reasons her work has held up critically over decades.

What is unusual about how the business is governed?

The House of Anita Dongre is run as a family business with members of her family in clear functional ownership of different parts of the group. The company has also taken on external investors at various points in its history, including private-equity-style structures, but the family has retained the core operating control. The blend of family business with corporate discipline is uncommon in Indian fashion at this scale, and is part of why the portfolio has stayed coherent as it has expanded.

What is Anita Dongre’s net worth?

There is no net-worth figure for Anita Dongre from a reputable, independently-verifiable source. House of Anita Dongre crossed roughly ₹1,000 crore in brand revenue (c. 2023) and she is a Forbes Asia Power Businesswomen honoree, but no credible personal net-worth figure is publicly reported. The numbers that appear on celebrity or “net worth” aggregator sites are unsourced and inconsistent, so, in line with our editorial policy,