Interview with Ayyappa Nagubandi

I have always been a fashion aficionado and I love to express myself with t-shirts; but my choice was limited. I wanted to create a clothing line that had integrated technology wherein I can express myself with what I wear. That is where the journey started, and we are now at a point where we have integrated technology into apparel to create the world's first touch-enabled t-shirt, Sygnal.

We are the first company to create touch-enabled clothing. We have authored multiple patents and have plans to branch out into other verticals of the fashion industry. Our unique designs and product tech integration position us in a different league altogether.

Our products are machine-washable, built for rough use and have a programmable API. Sygnal is the only brand in the market with world-first technology and such power-packed features.

We are a bootstrapped company. The initial funds were pooled in by our personal savings. We are currently operationally profitable, and any future funding we raise would be used to scale up, automate and expand our manufacturing and research and development.

In 2017, we achieved operational profitability, but as we continue to invest in refining our technology, production methods and various other aspects of the business, we expect a complete self-sustainability within the next two years.

We are in the prototype stage on designing a phone that can be worn and do all the things that smartphones do today. This is a result of application of our existing technology to a different field. All we can share for now is that we are re-imagining the smartphone as we know today.

We have consistently clocked 300 per cent growth y-o-y since we started out. Women's apparel and men's fashion go neck and neck in terms of sales figures. We are now planning to scale up in the children's fashion market and have set ourselves a target of tripling our revenues by next fiscal. We process bulk orders to major corporates and look to increase our footprint in this segment too.

As devices get smarter, data is playing a key role in our decision making. AI and IoT are integral parts of the next generation of clothing where fit, colour and fitness will be integrated into clothing directly. Wellness-driven fashion could be the early adopter, paving the way for full integration of AI into fashion.

When you buy a Sygnal t-shirt today, you can express what you feel with a tap. You can wash it hundreds of times, fold it, throw it and it works just fine. Yes, that's today. Sygnal is not only a much-needed disruption in the apparel industry, but also adds fun, zing and excitement to clothing. I'm proud to say that we created a new market called 'smart clothing' in the wearables segment.

As our volumes grow, so do our margins. We are bringing in some smart automation to improve our processes in key production areas. We expect to improve our efficiency by 20-30 per cent in the next fiscal by implementing smart automation techniques driven by our internal machine learning algorithms.

Global markets have contributed to a higher share of our sales especially North America and the Middle East. We are now planning to ramp up our scale in the domestic market and have set ourselves a target of tripling our revenues by next fiscal.

Our fashion products are integrated with tiny LEDs that connect with the accompanying app to give you complete control over what you wish to say. The t-shirts also come with an API integration that can help corporates get their brand message on all the t-shirts of their employees display the same content simultaneously. Some of the designs use a coin cell battery and some need to be charged.

The technology is patented, and compatible across all the clothing line that we sell. Our range currently extends to men's fashion, women's fashion, kids' clothing and accessories. We intend to expand the same technology to various other product lines in 2018.

We have an in-house team manufacturing the Broadcast t-shirts and all the fashion lines that we offer. The cost of production varies with the complexity of design and we try to keep it as low as possible for our end-users.

We market our products online and work with distributors across the spectrum. Although I cannot comment on the numbers, our online portal is gathering steam and we expect to go big in this area in the next 1-2 years.

We test the technology and endurance of our apparel before releasing them. As a part of the process, we wash a garment hundreds of times, fold it, throw it and it works just fine. It can be washed in a machine or by hand. Our engineering team has perfected the art of integrating circuits in apparel.

Tech wearables is just like any other wear with technology built on top of it. There are huge advantages of the added tech. For example, consider this: a cyclist riding on a foggy night would be able to make a turn by switching on the indicators inside of the clothing by just lifting hand to a certain degree. Now that has some practical advantages built into it.

We are very excited about the products our R&D team is developing and can't wait to see them in the market. We are developing a unique women's accessories line that is totally integrated with our patented technology; we are calling it 'Smart Accessories'. We are the pioneers in the smart clothing industry and it is made possible with our hard working R&D team. We want to make Sygnal smart clothing acceptable to everyone as a daily wear with a smarter mix of technology, design and innovation. After all, it is 'Made in India' for the world.

Our average growth y-o-y is 300 per cent, of which majority of the action took place this year. We nearly quadrupled our revenues and expect more. We are receiving enormous interest from corporates and Western markets alike. This growth is due to a combination of improvement in our production line capabilities and refinement of our technology. We aim to capture a higher share of the emerging wearable fashion technology market through production automations and applications in new segments of wearables.

We are currently shipping our product to a few countries in the West. We have seen a huge surge of requests for newer designs, concepts and more personalised apparel. To cater to the demand, we have diversified from four to 40 designs today which range from womenswear, concept-designed apparel and fitness shirts to accessories, bikers' jackets and more. We plan to take our product range to 150+ by next year to cater to this growing global demand.

Smart clothing could become a must-have in everyone's wardrobes. I believe it won't stop with that and all the accessories would become smart and would be able to sync to apparel and match themselves with complementary colours. It is also important to understand that as computing power grows, all devices including smart clothing and accessories would become virtual computing machines that would download designs that you like and show it up.(RR)