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IIMV FOUNDATION FOR INCUBATION ENTREPRENEURIAL LEARNING &

DEVELOPMENT(IIMV FIELD)

Start-up Stories

Sushmitha Basak - Sugar Shell Brands

Sugar Shell Brands has been established with an idea to provide well
researched, high quality and locally made apparel wears related to women’s
health. Our current focus is to creating safe, ergonomically designed, and good

quality inner-wears and breast prosthetics for chemo patients and breast
cancer survivors as per their needs.

As intimate wears are the first piece of clothingthatcome in contact with the
skin, it needs to be safe from bacterial growth, virus and any other carcinogenic
material. Patients who are going through chemo or just come out of surgery, are most vulnerable to such

scenario. Moreover, patients who are staying longer time at hospital may not get chance to wash their
inner garments on regular basis, which adds to the existing problems. Special material like antimicrobial,
antivirus, anti-carcinogenic and sweat absorption needs to be clinically tested before using it. Moreover,
such patients usually have restricted hand movements after the surgery. So special design of inner-wears
and materials are important to address all these problems.

Although some patients can afford good international products, in most cases either the material does not

suit the Indian climate, resulting unnecessary sweating or size deviates from the Indian size chart. So
clearly there is a lack of well-researched yet affordable apparel and garments that address women’s
health issues.

Sushmita Basak is an engineer with a penchant for design. After completing her undergraduate degree in
biomedical engineering, and NISM PGPSM in security markets, MBA in finance domain, she worked in the
corporate sector where she was exposed to many CSR and sustainability-related programmes. Her love

for ergonomic design took her to the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), where she aimed to
put her engineering background to good use in designing and creating new products.Sushmita launched
Sugar Shell Brands along with Debrup Majumdar, Moumita Basak and Mr. SibSankar Basak in 2021. The
start-up specialises in innerwear and prosthetics exclusively designed for breast cancer patients and
survivors. It claims to be the first “clean-label” lingerie brand in India, designed with state-of-the-art
technology.

The start-up was incubated at IIM Bangalore and IIM Visakhapatnam
through Women Entrepreneurship Program (WSP), and very recently

incubated at NDBI NID Ahmedabad with the offer of INR 22 Lakh as fund
raise.

25 VOL. / ISSUE /JAN APRIL