This home-grown Indian brand has caught the fancy of Hollywood’s A-list actors Naomi Watts and Eva Longoria. Bollywood’s fashion icon Sonam Kapoor, too, has taken a shine to the label’s spunky designs. Fashion accessories and lifestyle brand Nappa Dori is on a roll with its huge roster of leather products detailed with mixed materials from fabric to plastic.

“We have never asked any celebrity for endorsements, nor have we hired a PR company. The brand has grown organically,” says the 37-year-old Gautam Sinha, who’s steering the youthful label that’s making a mark globally in the world of fashion and lifestyle.

Nappa Dori has carved out a niche for itself in a sea of Indian leather brands, thanks to its chic international looks,
craftsmanship and what its founder calls its ‘Indian soul’. Ask him what the brand name stands for and pat comes the reply: “It signifies the two materials used in all our products. While Nappa is soft, fine-quality leather, Dori is thread in Hindi.”

Cutting-edge contemporary, young and aspirational, the label’s now five stores old in Delhi — in the happening Meharchand Market, Hauz Khas Village, Select Citywalk, M.G. Road and its newest outlet in One Horizon Center, Gurgaon. Out to expand, in September, a Nappa Dori store will open in Bangalore.

The brand is also forging into the international market aggressively and has made its mark in key stores abroad, including The Conran Shop in London and Paris, and The Little Market and Anthropologie in the US. It’s also available in stores in Japan, France, Finland, Germany, England, Dubai and the US.

Since the brand’s birth in 2010, Sinha has figured out that retailing higher numbers is critical to the growth of his business. So, he’s also casting his net wide and executing orders for top brands in the Middle East, US, France and Scandinavia. “Export was a big segment of my business when I started out. But today the focus has shifted to retailing Nappa Dori products in India and abroad,” says the NIFT graduate.

Sinha is moving in a different direction simultaneously. He’s designing in-room leather accessories for top notch hotels across the world including Burj Al Arab Jumeirah in Dubai, Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Beach, Fairmont Dubai, Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley in Australia and One&Only Cape Town in South Africa. In addition, he has done menu covers for iconic international restaurants including maze, a Gordon Ramsay dining outfit in London.

Nappa Dori handbags, travel cases, iPad covers, Mac sleeves, iPhone cases, belts and wristbands, leather organisers and more are crafted in leather and detailed with fabric, wood, metal and even plastic. Smart Indian designs and motifs decorate most items. “Products that bear Indian images are shot by a photographer friend and me. These narrate stories of the country in a contemporary way,” says the designer.

The products evoke nostalgia too. A Premier Padmini (Fiat car) adorns a smart iPad case while a variety of vintage trunks with metal and leather accents make you go back in time. “They’re popular for packing wedding trousseaus and as accent pieces for interiors,” he says.

The Nappa Dori Sapper Collection meanwhile is inspired by the soldiers of the British Raj and offers stationery, tool kits, organisers and ledgers. Although Sinha’s signature brand is a name to reckon with today, launching the business in the cut-throat world of product design wasn’t an easy matter. After graduating from NIFT in 2001, Sinha kick-started his career by designing Christmas decorations for an export house. “I learnt about commercially viable designs and gained experience on how to run a business,” he says.

His big break came a few years later when he received an order to deliver leather belts for a Dutch brand. “I had never worked with leather or designed belts before this and so I took on the job as a challenge,” smiles Sinha. The clients loved his handiwork and he went on to design for them in a big way.

Buoyed by a new-found confidence, Sinha graduated to making a complete line of lifestyle products. In 2006 he launched his first company, Definite Design (which he dissolved in 2016), and began exporting belts and executing orders for companies.

But, he adds, just executing orders is monotonous and can stifle one’s creativity. So, to give his creativity a free hand he unveiled Nappa Dori in 2010.

Today, the designer is constantly on the move making stopovers in destinations that are high on design like Croatia, Brussels and Antwerp. And he doesn’t give Paris a miss because he takes part in Maison&Objet Paris, a design fair.

Dividing his time between designing products for his brands and exporting, Sinha has a lot on his plate. But he’s not complaining. “My day never ends. I sleep, breathe and eat design.”