Known for her quit-wit, popular live shows, and pulsating voice on 95FM, Radio City and Radio Mantra, renowned Radio Jockey turned actor Sakshe Bhatt Somani now, plunges into entrepreneurship with her apparel and home furnishing brand Húmra.
Derived from the Arabic word, meaning ‘beautiful’ & ‘rose’ or ‘as beautiful as a blooming red rose”, Húmra takes its inspiration from Rajasthan’s traditional hand block prints on premium cotton fabric and works directly with the local artisans in its endeavour to promote Atmanirbharta or ‘Vocal for Local’.
With the vision to deliver quality products at an outstanding value for money and to match the latest trends and fine finishes, Húmra offers stylish home linens, hand block prints, kurtis in breathable mul cotton fabric under its wide range of daily, night, lounge, leisure, festive and kids wear, which are now available for the online shopper at its e-commerce platform www.humra.in.
Started with the exquisite collection of bed linen, back in the year 2018, the brand gained popularity locally first, selling through word of mouth in Gurgaon and Delhi and by taking part in small pop ups & trunk shows. The journey started with a wide range of bedcover sets, bedsheet sets & jaipuri quilts famous for their fine quality and before spring’19 it was time to add a range of apparels.
This is when the brand introduced Kurtis, unstitched suits with cotton, chiffon as well as kota doria dupattas and along with gota patti work to scale up the look. While the apparel was picking up the bed linen had already gained popularity and they started getting corporate diwali gifting orders. Humra delivered over 500 pieces of diwali gifts in its 1st year with customised attractive packaging.
As Sakshe started with her initial preparation for the Summer’20 collection the pandemic hit the global buying sentiment, but to her surprise, more and more traffic built up on Húmra’s e-commerce portal.
Driven with the need of spurting trend of work-from-home, Sakshe started with first designing her own casual wears since doing house chores in rayons or hosiery would not be the most skin-friendly choice and the linens were too deliate to be worn at home daily.
What was a need, soon catapulted into a demand as her friends and neighbours took note of her creativity and then there was no looking back. In less than a few months Sakshe started procuring fabric from her local artisans and started designing Kurti’s and Comfort wears as per the demand and trends. In no time her line of Lounge wear, Kurtis, Tailored suit sets and colorful and adorable kid’s night wear started flying off the shelf.
Come Diwali’20 once again, her Gurgaon based home-office turned into a retail/warehouse, from where she shipped thousands of corporate & retail orders across the markets of – Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Banaglore, Punjab, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai & Rajasthan ,this included her wide range of home furnishing and Bed linen like Bedsheet sets, Jaipuri Quilts, Dohars , Table linen, Festive wear & colorful block print tote bags in accessories.
Húmra’s line of apparel offers an extraordinary level of comfort specially for the consumers of South, Central and Northern parts of India who face the extremity of harsh summer heat. Giving a fusion of premium cotton fabric and beautiful traditional block print designs, Húmra’s products are handcrafted using the finest quality of cotton with designs that are definite to be a head turner, whether you are on work ‘from’ or ‘at’ home or ‘ready to step out’. The fabric and designs are sure to hit a pulse with every audience.
Sakshe Bhatt Somani, Founder, Húmra, said, “Hailing from Udaipur the land of Mewar, I have been extremely passionate about the local art and wanted to do something to support the locals and the industry. After getting married in Jaipur, I got to explore this wide and so talked about world of block print fabrics and I thought to myself why not give it a shot.
“And after successfully testing waters as a home grown venture, I realised that it was now time to take the plundge & launch Húmra as an e-commerce brand and reach a wider set of audience across the globe. With our wide collection of hand block bed linen and apparel it is our endeavour to pleasantly surprise clients with something new every season and for every reason.
“Both comfortable and stylish to get into, Húmra’s Summer’21 collection includes beautiful easy breezy Kaftans in attractive prints and colors like zig-zag indigo, pink strawberry and yellow elephants, new vibrant pastel shades & floral prints in our best selling home wear, Indo-western top bottom suit sets with izhaar pants for the women on the go as well as short kurtis for the younger girls who are always running out of options when it comes to picking fashionable yet comfortable tops that they can team with their trendy denims,” Somani added.