Meet the founder of The Zokart – Shamika Vaidya, who was an IT professional but turned into a fulltime artist in her recently founded business.

The Zokart was founded in April 2019 with the mission to provide the best quality hand-made products by empowering the local artisans. As a brand, their core values are to empower the artisans, giving the top customer experience, providing superior quality products, and bringing innovations in their designs. They promise to provide one of a kind customized products as they never repeat their designs. This means that all the customers who buys customized shoes will have unique shoes unlike what we usually get from the usual retail stores. The brand has various products to offer such as Hand-painted customized shoes, jackets, ethnic footwear, fashion accessories and anything else that can be painted. The best part is that customers can also send their new/old products for the make-over directly at their Workshop in Thane, Maharashtra.

The story of The Zokart begins with the idea of empowering local artists in India who hold the ability to create astonishing wonders with their hands. The Zokart’ is not just a brand of fashion accessories, it’s a journey of revolutionizing the perception of fashion in India by re-discovering traditional Indian art as well as modern art. ‘Hand-painted’ and ‘Hand-crafted’ are the two strong pillars of the brand which makes them stand out in the crowd.

Shamika who is a self-taught artist loved to paint since her childhood. However, coming from a middle-class family, she was asked to make her career in Computer Engineering.  After working for an MNC for almost 4 years, she took a bold decision to leave her job and follow her passion. It was indeed a tough decision as there was no financial stability in the initial days. The Zokart was initially founded as ‘Zordar Kalakar Store’ which translates as the store of a finest artist. Later the name was changed to The Zokart which is a short form of the original name.

Shamika says, the market is yet to normalize due the global pandemic. During the lockdowns in 2020, the business suffered a lot by losing sales of over 6 months, however online workshops and coaching helped us to survive during last year. She further added that the hand-painted products are still not easily accepted by Indian customers. One of the biggest concerns of all the customer is the durability of the paints and we make sure to educate them on the durability. The paints used on our products are more durable than the most of the printed garments. This is why our customers are loyal and almost 60% of our total sales comes from the repetitive orders of our loyal customers. We have started taking orders from all over the world have already sold our products to countries like Australia, USA, Switzerland, Dubai, Canada, Germany etc where the value for handmade products is comparatively higher than in India. This is why even after the global pandemic we are growing more than 20% month over month.  Although, to cater to the larger audience in India, The Zokart has recently launched non-painted products including, T-shirts, Ethnic Footwear etc.  Next focus for our brand is to start B2B sales to boost the sales and sign up franchisee stores across India.  This will tremendously help us in bringing the work of our artists to larger audience.

The Zokart is now one of the fastest-growing brands in the Hand-made segment. Founded by an artist who is passionate about bringing the best art for the customers.