How a CA from Rajasthan Turned a Rs 50,000 Side Hustle into a Rs 66 Crore Turnover Footwear Brand

Natwar Agrawal, a young man from Sikar, Rajasthan, started Bacca Bucci, a footwear brand, in 2013, with just Rs 50,000. He launched the business as a side hustle from a single PG room he was staying at in Delhi, with two designs of footwear.

A decade later, Bacca Bucci is making a range of products like sneakers, boots, belts, sports shoes, and colourful sneaker laces, and has achieved a turnover of Rs 66 crore.

Natwar Agrawal started Bacca Bucci in 2013 with Rs 50,000 from a PG room in Delhi (Photos: Special Arrangement)

Initially, they sold about 250 shoes per day, which has now grown to 4,000 daily sales, with the price range of their shoes ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs. 2,500.

Bacca Bucci’s business model is simple. The product development team first conducts R&D on the shoe and its design. Once the designers finalise the design, the development execution team creates the prototype.


When the prototype is ready and the product has been tested for appearance, durability, and comfort, the company supplies the raw materials to third-party manufacturers for bulk production. The final product is then photographed and uploaded.

90% of Bacca Bucci’s business is online and only 10% is offline. Out of the 90% online business, 60% comes from e-commerce marketplaces Amazon, Nykaa, Myntra, Tata Cliq, etc. whereas 30% comes from their website and app. Out of the entire sales, 55% comes from sneakers, 30% from athleisure and the remaining from boots.

Natwar’s entrepreneurial journey began soon after completing his CA. His first job was at a loan consultancy firm in Noida, where he earned a salary of Rs 50,000.

Childhood friends Natwar and Anuj faced many challenges in the early days but turned Bacca Bucci into a thriving brand

But within just a few months of starting his job, he launched his footwear business in December 2013, while continuing to work at the firm.

“I used to work during the day for the company and kept my evenings for the business. I used to sleep at 2:00 a.m. after finishing all the business work and then woke up early for the office, barely getting any rest,” says Natwar, reflecting on those early days.

“E-commerce platforms were new then, and they didn’t have proper systems to manage customer calls. So, customer calls were routed directly to vendors, which made it challenging for me to respond while working.”

However, seeing the positive response to Bacca Bucci, Natwar decided to go full-time into the business in March 2014.

In the initial days, Natwar had only one person to help him, a newspaper hawker boy. The duo would pack the shoes at night after finishing their day jobs, and the boy would drop the orders at the courier company’s office the next morning.

Natwar paid him Rs 5 per packet for the job. Today, the company has grown to 95 employees, including designers, development executives, sales and marketing staff, and social media and website managers.

Anuj Nevatia, Bacca Bucci’s co-founder, joined the business in 2014. He and Natwar are batchmates from the same school in Sikar. They were together in the CA program as well; however, Anuj dropped out of the CA course and never completed it.

Natwar turned a small side hustle into one of India’s fastest-growing footwear brands.

Natwar was born in 1988 in Sikar, Rajasthan, which is about 115 km from Jaipur. His father owned a rice mill, and his mother was a housewife. He has two older sisters.

After completing his Class 12 in 2008, he moved to Delhi, where he cleared the CA entrance exam (CPT). He enrolled in a graduation course in 2010 and completed it via correspondence from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, in 2013.

Natwar, along with his friend Anuj, faced several hurdles in the business. In the early days, when there was a cash crunch, they asked the manufacturers for credit.

“Some questioned why we, as CA graduates, were ‘wasting’ our degrees by entering the shoe business,” says Natwar. “But over time, they saw we had a solid business plan and believed in us. Their trust grew when they saw we were capable of succeeding.”

Natwar also borrowed money from his elder sister, who works at an investment firm in Boston, US, and later returned it.

They also had to learn many things in the business from the mistakes they made. “We didn’t know much about the shoe industry and didn’t realise shoes even had an expiry date,” says Natwar.

“Without knowing this, we overstocked a design that didn’t sell, and we had to scrap the entire stock. We sold the shoes to a scrap dealer for Rs 10 per kg.”

The Bacca Bucci team drives the success of the brand with creative designs and innovative strategies

However, their appearance in Shark Tank India was a major turning point for them. “The Shark Tank India opportunity brought us significant recognition,” Natwar recalls.

“After our appearance, we saw a 50x increase in traffic to our website. We made valuable connections, and many service providers reached out to us. This helped us hire skilled staff, which is often a challenge for startups.”

From 2013, they had been selling their products only through third party e-commerce websites. Bacca Bucci launched its own website only in 2019.

“We wanted our own website because platforms like Amazon and Flipkart didn’t share customer data with us,” says Natwar. “We knew customers were reaching us, but we were unaware of their favourite products. So, we decided to develop our own website.”

In 2022, Bacca Bucci ventured into offline sales to test the waters through a multi-brand store in Rohini, Delhi. Recently, they have stepped into the Dubai market as well.

Natwar handles product design and finance, while Anuj leads marketing and content at Bacca Bucci

The company has a 25,000 sq ft warehouse in East Delhi’s Ghazipur area. Apart from this, they have fulfilment centres in almost all zones across the country, including Haryana, Mumbai, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.

Anuj handles the marketing and content departments, while Natwar is in charge of product development and finance. They have also divided the front and back ends of the website between them.

Natwar married Kirti Gupta in 2017. She is the branch manager at Union Bank of India, Noida. The couple has a three-year-old son. - ©TWL