Neha Kant co-founded Clovia in 2013, and stayed on after Reliance Retail bought it for ₹950 crore

The Indian intimate-apparel category, for most of its modern history, has been a difficult shelf for an Indian woman to shop. Sizing was imported, often guessed at; styles were built for someone else’s body. Clovia, launched in 2013, was one of the first Indian D2C brands to treat that shelf as a serious technology and merchandising problem.

The brand was co-founded by Pankaj Vermani (CEO), Neha Kant (Director and Chief Revenue Officer) and Suman Chowdhury (supply chain and operations). Pankaj and Neha are husband and wife, one of the cleaner examples on the Indian founder map of a couple-run consumer business, but the operating story has always been a three-founder story. On 20 March 2022, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited announced the acquisition of an 89% equity stake in parent Purple Panda Fashions Private Limited for ₹950 crore (roughly US$125 million). The founding team retained around 11% and stayed on to run the brand under the Reliance umbrella.

From an India Today e-commerce desk to a category bet

Neha Kant’s pre-Clovia career sat at the intersection of advertising, media and early Indian e-commerce. She had worked as an account executive at FCB Ulka early on, then spent significant time at the India Today Group, including a senior sales and marketing role at the group’s e-commerce venture “Bag It Today”. Before Clovia she also worked at Smile Interactive Technologies Group. The thread across those roles was operating a consumer business with an internet front door, categories, assortment, sell-through, well before “D2C” was a label.

Pankaj Vermani brought the complementary half. An IIT Delhi alumnus (integrated B.Tech/M.Tech in computers) and a serial founder, including the ed-tech venture Vriti before Clovia, he came with a strong product and engineering background. Suman Chowdhury brought operations and supply chain. The three-founder structure is easy to overlook in the press, the husband-wife framing tends to dominate, but it is the structure on which Clovia is built.

A tech-led fit engine for an under-served category

Clovia’s thesis was not just “sell intimate apparel online.” It was that the right way to win this category in India was to treat fit and sizing as a data and technology problem. The company invested early in a fit-recommendation engine, building survey-based and measurement-based tooling that helped first-time online buyers find a size they could trust without a fitting room. That was unusual for an Indian D2C brand of its vintage and gave Clovia a recognisable moat against marketplace listings of imported brands.

On top of that engine, the catalogue widened over time. Clovia is now described publicly as covering lingerie, sleepwear and loungewear, activewear, maternity wear and a personal-care line, the kind of breadth that lets a brand turn an annual purchase into a wardrobe relationship.

Series A, Series B and a quiet decade of compounding

The brand’s funding history is the slow, multi-stage arc you tend to see in serious consumer companies rather than the headline-grabbing burst of the late-2010s consumer-internet rush. After early angel and seed interest, Clovia raised a Series A from IvyCap Ventures in July 2016. In January 2019 it raised a Series B of roughly US$10 million, led by Singapore-based AT Capital. Through that period the founders kept their public posture quiet and built methodically: more SKUs, more sizes, more cities, and steady investment in the fit engine.

By the time large retail consolidators looked at the Indian intimate-apparel category in the early 2020s, Clovia was one of the clearest standalone assets in the space, a brand with its own audience, its own data and a national customer base built through e-commerce.

The Reliance Retail acquisition

On 20 March 2022, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) announced that it had acquired an 89% equity stake in Purple Panda Fashions Private Limited, the parent of Clovia, for ₹950 crore. Press reporting and advisor disclosures put the deal at roughly US$125 million. The founding team retained a residual stake of around 11%.

The deal sat alongside Reliance’s other moves into the women’s innerwear and intimate-apparel category, notably its earlier majority stake in Zivame in 2020, and its Amante portfolio through subsidiary rights, and was widely read as Reliance building the category under one operator. Significant for the founder-story version of this arc: Neha Kant did not exit. She continued, and continues, as Co-founder, Director and Chief Revenue Officer of Clovia.

What stays the same after a big-retail acquisition

The unusual thing about Clovia’s post-deal posture is not the deal itself, but how visibly the founders kept their seats at the table. In a category where founder exits are common after a strategic acquisition, all three Clovia co-founders stayed in operating roles under the Reliance Retail umbrella, product, revenue, and supply chain, while the brand continued to address its own audience and assortment.

That continuity matters for the Indian D2C story more broadly. A founder team that stays on after a strategic buyer arrives is a different sort of exit narrative than a clean cash-out, the kind that can serve as a template for other D2C founders who want a home for their brand without losing the operating logic that built it in the first place.

What Indian women founders can take from the Clovia story

Clovia’s arc is unusual for the Indian D2C category in three connected ways. First, the founder team was a husband-and-wife pair plus a third operating co-founder rather than a sole-founder story, a structure that let the company scale across product, revenue and supply chain simultaneously. Second, it stayed quiet for long enough to let the fit engine and the catalogue catch up to the marketing narrative. And third, the strategic exit to Reliance Retail did not sweep the founders out the door, Neha Kant stayed in an operating seat.

For Indian women considering starting up, especially in categories where international brands and legacy retailers dominate the shelf, the Clovia playbook is a reminder that the most enduring D2C moat is rarely loud creative. It is often a quiet technical investment, in fit, in sizing, in the categorical understanding of the customer, that no marketing budget can substitute for.

Frequently asked questions about Neha Kant and Clovia

Who founded Clovia?

Clovia is the consumer-facing brand of Purple Panda Fashions Private Limited. It was co-founded in 2013 by Pankaj Vermani, Neha Kant and Suman Chowdhury. Pankaj Vermani is CEO and brings the technology and product background; Neha Kant, his wife, is Director and Chief Revenue Officer; Suman Chowdhury leads supply chain and operations. The brand is commonly described as a husband-and-wife co-founder story, but the operating leadership has always sat across the three named co-founders.

What does Clovia sell?

Clovia is a D2C brand focused on Indian women’s intimate apparel and adjacent personal care. The catalogue spans lingerie, sleepwear and loungewear, activewear, maternity and innerwear, as well as a personal-care line. The brand built its early audience online, through its own website, marketplaces and a fit-recommendation engine designed for Indian sizing, and later moved into physical retail.

When did Reliance Retail acquire Clovia, and what was the deal?

On 20 March 2022, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited announced the acquisition of an 89% equity stake in Purple Panda Fashions Private Limited for ₹950 crore (roughly US$125 million). The founding team retained around 11% equity post-deal and continued to operate the brand under the Reliance Retail umbrella, alongside other Reliance innerwear interests.

What does Neha Kant do at Clovia today?

Neha Kant continues as Co-founder, Director and Chief Revenue Officer at Clovia post-acquisition. She is publicly cited across women-in-fashion-retail features as part of the operating leadership that stayed on through the transition into the Reliance Retail group, an unusual outcome for a female co-founder of an acquired D2C brand in India.

What is Neha Kant’s net worth?

There is no net-worth figure for Neha Kant from a reputable, independently-verifiable source. Clovia (Purple Panda Fashions) was acquired by Reliance Retail for about ₹950 crore (2022); her personal share of the proceeds is not disclosed. The numbers that appear on celebrity or “net worth” aggregator sites are unsourced and inconsistent, so, in line with our editorial policy,