How a Weekend Side Project Became an $80K/Month B2B Fashion Sourcing Portal

Who built it, and what they built

Apaar Gupta is the founder of The Design Cart, an online B2B sourcing portal for the fashion industry based in New Delhi, India. He holds an engineering degree and an MBA, and spent four years working at two of India's largest startups before launching his own venture.

The Design Cart operates as a managed marketplace connecting fashion designers, studios, and apparel brands with suppliers of textiles, fabrics, accessories, and trims. The company says it reduces procurement timelines and costs by over 30% for its buyers.

The business has been live since January 2018 and currently operates only in India. It employs 25 people and works with a supply network deployed at over 200 large-scale manufacturers and traders.

Where the idea came from

Apaar's family business had been involved in the fashion industry for roughly 30 years. He started The Design Cart as a weekend project to give that business an online presence and generate supplementary income.

While keeping his full-time job, he taught himself to build a website, photographed thousands of products, cataloged them, and began reaching out to prospective clients through Facebook groups focused on fashion design, embroidery, and apparel.

The turning point came when he began meeting fashion designers in person. Over six months of weekend meetings, he spoke with more than 800 designers across India. A consistent theme emerged: sourcing raw materials was a genuine pain point with no tech-enabled solution available.

That feedback convinced him to leave his job. In November 2017, after about two months of mental preparation and family discussions, he quit to work on the venture full time.