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, Russia; 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!