Today, women are more active than they have ever been. Women of the 21st century have broken barriers to get ahead in the male owned workplace. In India, there is a huge disparity in the gender ratio that exists at the workplace. But there has been a great improvement in this ratio with more women turning up for jobs at all the levels of corporate roles. But what do Indian women wear to work? (besides burning ambition) The business attire at the workplace requires women to wear western formals or Indian formals. I would like to point out here, the unavailability of enough options in the western formal category.
The western formalwear market in India can be broadly classified into two categories: Business wear, which includes formal shirts, trousers, suits, skirts, dresses, etc. and Event-specific formal wear, which includes formal clothing worn at events such as weddings, parties, etc.
Now the issue is that, the estimated worth of the western formal wear market in India is US$ 4,675 million, of which only 10 percent is contributed by women’s formal wear.
Most of the concentration of western formal wear lies in urban areas, with major contributions from metros. The low share of women formal wear can be due to two primary reasons:
- The skewed ratio of working women and men
- Ethnic wear categories such as saris, salwar-kameez, etc. which gives a strong competition
But many Indian women no longer restrict themselves to ethnic wear in the offices. They see themselves at par with their western counterparts in terms of organisational hierarchy and realise the importance of business attire in office and business meetings.
Aditya Birla Group has helped in easing this issue by bringing up brands like Pantaloons, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, etc into the market. The fact that apart from providing quality products in this sector, it also caters to different income groups. Pantaloons and People provide good ranges of products catering to the middle and upper middle-class customers. And brands like Van Heusen and Allen Solly cater to the upper-class customers. Thus, at a place where Indian women have to deliberately run in search of good formal wear, Aditya Birla comes to aid. I personally prefer Allen Solly over all other brands and whenever I’m stuck, I know Allen Solly will be the place where my search will end. Thanks to Aditya Birla Group for ending our incessant search here and providing us with a relief.