With Love From Granny: Starting Up At 75, This Duo Is Winning Hearts With Hand-Knitted Goods

One fine day in New Delhi, Kritika Sondhi was sitting beside her grandmother, Asha Puri, and watching while she was passionately knitting winter wear. It was 2017 and Kritika was going through a rough phase in her life. That’s exactly when she decided to join her grandma and start knitting to engage herself and drive away from any negative thoughts. Though it is an everyday sight related to the elderly, Kritika who is a Psychology graduate and also holds an MBA degree, found the entire process of knitting quite therapeutic.

“At that time, I really needed something to keep myself engrossed. I needed a stress-buster. My Nani used to happily knit all the time so I thought, why not learn something new?” said Kritika Sondhi to LifeBeyondNumbers.

Kritika’s maternal grandmother is originally from Ludhiana and had relocated to Delhi 50 years ago. She has been a homemaker all her life and currently spends time in India as well as the US (where both her sons are settled).

The more time Kritika spent knitting, she realized the fact that her grandmother had been engaging in this therapeutic yet strenuous activity for more than 5 decades without any monetary returns or appreciation. This very fact lit a business idea, With Love From Granny, a startup that sells hand-knitted goods which Kritika pitched to her grandmother.

Granny Asha Puri learned knitting as part of the skills that most women of her time would be taught. For a long time, she didn’t even tell people that she used to knit. She found Kritika’s idea quite odd as no one else saw a monetary benefit out of the craft. Yet deep in her heart, she loves doing it and considers it a life skill.

Likewise, Kritika faced negative remarks when she first told her friends that she was learning to knit.

“Most of the time, the response was not very encouraging. They would say, ‘Have you started to do the things grannies do?’ or things like ‘You have completed your MBA then why are you doing this?’ Such reactions made me refrain from telling people about my work. But then I realized, how does it matter when I enjoy what I do?” she shared.

The world largely associates knitting and stitching with homemakers or grannies, or as a domestic activity that one could take up only as a hobby. And that is exactly the stereotype that Kritika aims to break. A good quality woolen product has more longevity and knitting itself is very calming. Yet in India, knitting is highly underrated and underpaid because of which people are not motivated to invest so much time in it.

“Today, people are able to see this as a possible therapeutic activity, a new skill they can develop and create something that lasts for years. One needs to understand that knitting is a time-consuming activity that needs a lot of patience. We are trying to change the stereotypes and barriers attached to the work by selling the products to convey the message,” Kritika added.

Nani Ji is currently spending busy days with the new startup. She rushes to finish her personal work and start knitting. After all, there are so many orders that the Instagram store has started to get. The venture has in a way given the grandmother newfound respect, a sense of identity that any individual would yearn for.

Soon after things started to run well, Kritika planned to make it large. She wanted to extend this opportunity to many more people who are talented and hard-working but haven’t been able to find a platform to market or sell their products. Today, they have a team of 16 people from all age groups and social backgrounds and hope to take this number beyond 20 by the end of this year.

Many other grandmas have joined in delivering fine products that one could snuggle all winter. Seventy-year-old Chanchal Arora shares what made her join the team and how it has helped her.

“Over the past decades, I have made sweaters and gloves for my children and they loved it. When Asha got in touch with me, I was more than happy to come on board. My mind used to be preoccupied with a lot of negative thoughts. But now I find myself so engrossed with work that I don’t get the time to think of anything else,” Arora said.

Likewise, several youngsters are now part of With Love From Granny, including a 29-year-old male crochet maker, who is now a member of their team.

“He is a dentist by profession but also makes crochet products. He also picked the skill from his grandmother. Creative expression cannot have age or gender limitations,” Sondhi said.

All the knitters are closely helped and trained by Grandma Puri. Of them, she has also trained two women from lower-income groups, who mainly earn a living by ironing clothes.

“We have recently launched an initiative called ‘Project Neeshka’ to work with people from the lower socio-economic background by training them to create standardized products, which have been selling under our brand. We have been able to find a few people and hope to bring 8-10 more on board,” informed Sondhi.

The majority of With Love From Granny’s business interactions are conducted through their Instagram page, apart from word-of-mouth. They plan to start a series on knitting, including video tutorials and masterclasses.

“We are setting up our B2B website which will go live by the end of this month. Our effort is to start taking bulk & corporate orders, especially from the international market, in order to sustain our business and provide a steady income to everyone working with us. Our products have a huge demand and we hope to see our vision shaping up soon,” the startup’s mastermind, Kritika said.

With Love From Granny has got an overwhelming response to date. This year they have been selling more than 100 products consistently for the last 3 months.

Envisioning the startup’s future, Kritika said, ”I want to work with craft clusters in other states where knitting is a traditional form of art and help local artists find a channel to sell their products. My effort is to create value for these products in the Indian market and revive the skill.”

This winter, how about ordering your own hand-knitted sweater from Granny?