About
KAPDAA /cup-a-da/ means cloth in Sanskrit. This mother and son duo started from a store in Mumbai, with a bookmark made from offcuts. Nish has taken his mum’s legacy forward and scaled to create a sustainable, handcrafted, limited edition stationery and accessories brand in the UK. So far KAPDAA has collaborated with over 300 brands including mills in Scotland, tailors, interior and fashion designers in London, NY,Milan; weavers, shoemakers in LA and Paris and even pram manufacturers in Belgium and many more.
#everypiecematters
I grew up in Mumbai surrounded by beautiful fabrics thanks to my Mum’s fashion studio called KAPDAA, as she is a bespoke fashion designer who always has unique fabric offcuts that she kept for various patterns.
In the initial stages of my working life in Mumbai and then London, I decided to use my creative inheritance in advertising. This allowed me to work for respected agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy, and McCann. I then decided to take a break to do my MA in Managing and Creative Economy at Kingston University which opened the entrepreneurial side of me. Being an advertising person, I was always fascinated with creating a brand from scratch and giving that brand a purpose – Eco-friendly sustainability.
On completion of my MA, I visited my Mum in Mumbai and that’s where the light bulb moment happened. In her studio, I saw tons of lovely fabric material fall to the ground and that eventually would be thrown away. I just couldn’t see the beautiful fabric go waste, so I sat down with the head designer at my mother’s workshop and cut a rectangular piece of fabric, which was then pasted together to create a beautiful bookmark. This was the first offcut product – the beginning of a new chapter in my life.
Remembering the idea of creating a brand, I thought why not use her brand KAPDAA and add The Offcut company. As the idea came from her offcut and I am her offcut too :)
Hence KAPDAA – The Offcut Company was born!