How Neeman’s Built a Sustainable Footwear Brand in India

In 2016, Taran Chhabra was living in the US, leading business analytics for a company, and had accumulated 200+ pairs of shoes as a deeply frustrated consumer.

Each pair filled a specific gap - running, office, casual Friday, formal dinners, weekend travel - but none of them did everything. Once, while travelling, he packed five pairs for a single trip: one for running, one for walking, one for the office, and so on, only for his luggage to be misplaced. 

That moment of absurdity became the founding insight of a brand. 

The question Chhabra couldn't shake was: why does no shoe exist that you can wear everywhere, all day, across India's brutal climate range, without destroying your feet or the planet? 

The answer, he discovered, was not that such a shoe was technically impossible. It was that nobody had a business incentive to make one. The entire footwear industry profits from the multiplication of occasions. 

More occasions, more pairs, more revenue. Neeman's was built to break that loop.

P.S. I have a personal bias towards the brand as I recognize with the cause + I bought ONE pair that I have been wearing daily since 2+ years now, and it will still last me good! Rarely do I see products these days lasting that long, kudos to the brand!

Let’s look at their start-up journey!

The Origin: 

Developing a shoe from scratch was a steep learning curve. Taran spent months in China, working closely with factories to understand the intricate process of shoe manufacturing - learning that a single shoe involves numerous components, each sourced from different vendors and assembled by various hands. What he found when he pulled back the curtain on shoe production disturbed him. 

Conventional shoes are essentially petroleum products - synthetic uppers, chemical adhesives, processed leather treated with heavy metals. Making one pair of leather shoes uses over 8,000 litres of water. The environmental cost was designed to remain invisible.

Chhabra and his brother Amar Preet Singh - a veteran operations professional with over 15 years running startups - spent time testing bamboo, cotton, and hemp before landing on Merino wool from Australia. 

“Merino wool has anti-bacterial qualities, is moisture-absorbing, odour-resistant, and can be worn in any season - keeping feet warm in winter and cool in summer - and worn without socks.” (Source)

It was well known in Western performance apparel but had never been used in Indian footwear. The journey from concept to design to manufacturing and launch took around 22 months. 

The wool was converted into fabric at a mill in South Korea. The shoes were assembled in China. The warehouse in Hyderabad. The whole supply chain was built across countries before a single rupee of revenue.

Not only this, they also developed footwear from plastic waste and old tires, reducing the environmental burden caused by the industry. 

The brand name itself is a combination of their parents' names - Neelam and Manjeet. A family business in the most literal sense. 

Neeman's launched its website in December 2018 with three styles for men, all made from Merino wool, all priced between ₹2,999 and ₹6,999 - premium by Indian D2C standards at the time. 

And almost immediately, they ran into a wall.

The Problem and The Solution: 

What Neeman's encountered early was something harder than competition - it was consumer indifference. 

When the Chhabra brothers asked customers which Indian footwear brand they aspired to buy, they were greeted with silence. Customers did not usually understand the brand ethos of Indian footwear manufacturers. 

The aspirational footwear space in India was entirely owned by Nike, Adidas, and Skechers. Building premium equity for a homegrown brand in that vacuum was starting on minus.

The second problem was more operationally damaging. Customers were buying a pair, receiving it - and then leaving it in the box. The product sat unworn. Neeman's was losing in the drawer. The competition was the inertia of habit. You reach for what you know. And nobody knew Merino wool shoes.

Neeman's solved this with a post-purchase activation playbook. 

Within one week of delivery, the team personally reached out to new customers, simply to ask: have you worn them? The friction of that first wear was the actual conversion event. 

Like most businesses, Neeman's saw a dip in sales during Covid-19, but rather than worrying about that, it worked on improving internal processes, the existing range of shoes, and focused more on product development. During Covid-19, Neeman’s still had 3x growth.

The pandemic killed foot traffic and casual impulse purchases. But it accelerated exactly the consumer behaviour Neeman's was betting on - people working from home, spending more time online, thinking harder about comfort, and, crucially, becoming more environmentally conscious. 

But the early capital story was its own test. 

Funding and Revenue: 

Neeman's has raised a total of $22.6M across 7 rounds from 44 investors, with Sixth Sense Ventures, Anicut Capital, and Stride Ventures as the marquee names. 

The funding trajectory tells a story of steady conviction rather than hyper-growth mania. There was no massive Series A blowout. No viral moment that unlocked a $50M round. Just consistent product improvement, market education, and capital deployed against real unit economics.

The revenue growth mirrors this. Revenue grew 47% from ₹47 crore in FY22 to ₹69 crore in FY23. FY24 saw operating revenue rise 11.4% year-on-year to ₹76.94 crore, while net losses fell ~14%, indicating better cost control and more disciplined marketing spend. 

The growth rate slowed, but the margin story improved. That shift from growth-at-all-costs to unit economics discipline is the maturity signal investors want to see before a serious scaling round.

The signal of that maturity was that in late 2024, Neeman's appointed Sumit Maloo as CFO - previously with Skechers South Asia, where he led financial strategy, operations, planning and analysis, and treasury. The message to the market was clear: Neeman's is moving from brand-building mode into institutional-grade execution mode.

The Strategy: 

The D2C model served Neeman's beautifully in its first five years. Direct-to-consumer meant direct data, direct feedback loops, and the ability to control the brand narrative without a retailer diluting the sustainability message. 

The brand has 29 exclusive brand stores across the country with an ambitious target of 100 stores in the next few years, with a focus on Tier II and III cities. 

This is because footwear is a tactile product. 

The first wear problem that haunted early D2C growth gets solved the moment a customer walks into a store and slips on a pair.

Neeman's is also exploring quick commerce as a channel - already live on Zepto - because quick commerce helps with brand discovery and product accessibility at speed. 

Neeman's is intentionally executing this omnichannel combination of fast discovery online and experiential trust in stores.