Harish Closepet and Rashmi Closepet are founders of Itsy Bitsy
Ever miss your craft classes or want to do papercraft again? Itsy Bitsy is a one-stop startup for craft materials from the manufacturer to retailers. “Our efforts will be to grow fast and while we do that we do not want to compromise on our ethos of social responsibility and enabling rural communities to serve the world," said the founders.
We all miss our craft period of the school where we used to draw our world with papers. Itsy Bitsy was launched in 2007 with the simple goal of making the highest quality of art and craft supplies accessible to everybody in India while inspiring creativity. This startup made life easy and crafty for craft lovers.
The couple turned this simple childhood activity into a profitable yet creative business, spreading fragrance in the lives of around 2,000 women and today is India’s biggest retailer for art and craft supplies with more than 10000 products in their retail stores and online store.
This journey took many turns but in the end, the duo is standing at a position that can’t be denied. They were both doing different jobs in Australia but returned to Banglore in 2004 with their savings and took a small factory on rent to make paper flowers.
They had experiences from their old jobs which proved very helpful throughout this journey. Now, there are 24 Itsy Bitsy stores located in 8 cities across the country, with 11 in Bengaluru alone, and the rest in Goa, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi. They make over 120000000 handmade flowers every year and are the pioneers of India's largest art & craft festival, popularly known as the Itsy Bitsy Creativity Carnival, which was first held in Dec 2018.
