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Sanchit Baweja is the Co-Founder and CBO of Stage3, India’s leading fashion rental and styling platform, transforming the way millennial India consumes fashion. In his role at the company, Sanchit spearheads revenue growth, marketing, and collaborations, ensuring that various business functions are seamlessly aligned to create unparalleled experiences for customers from end-to-end.

Having completed his Bachelors of Finance from The Australian National University, Canberra, Sanchit’s keen eye for, and interest in fashion led him to start his first venture straight out of college. Upon his return to India he started Buttons ‘n’ Threads, a custom menswear brand primarily targeting the US and Australian markets, the idea for which was born from a first-hand experience that led him to identify a major need-gap. He scaled the venture to over 1000 customers in 25 countries and bootstrapped the business to over a $150K in revenues. With strong business acumen from his previous venture, Sanchit, along with Sabena Puri and Rina Dhaka, Co-founded Stage3 in 2016.

Stage3 provides affordable access to on-trend, glamorous fashion, by leveraging an ecosystem of top designers, celebrity stylists and key data insights. The full stack fashion-tech platform has two business models in place – a rental model (Stage3) and a commerce model (Alaya by Stage3). It is the one-stop destination that provides millennials access to celebrity-endorsed, highly coveted pieces all of which can be borrowed without the hassle of dry-cleaning, storage or the big question of “Will I ever wear it again”. It also lets users buy stylish elevated essentials that transcend seasons, co-developed by designers and celebrity stylists.

Today, the company is backed by some of the biggest names in the industry, including Nisha Kumar –Ex-CFO, Rent the Runway, Anaita Adjania Shroff – Fashion Editor, Vogue India and Rhea Kapoor, Film Producer and Celebrity Stylist, currently on-board as Stage3’s Style Director. Under Sanchit’s leadership, Stage3 has grown 10X in the last two years, both in terms of revenue and customers, and recently raised funds of USD 2mn from marquee early stage investors, Blume Ventures.

Sanchit’s role is instrumental in building Stage3’s network of 200+ designers, 150+ leading influencers and 50+ stylists & celebrities. He has put forth several out-of-the-box marketing initiatives such as a soon-to-be-launched ‘Glam on wheels’, a first of its kind offline retail experience in India and a sustainable fashion campaign with Rhea Kapoor, which garnered 20M+ impressions amongst others. Sanchit has also conceptualized a new retail experience via Stage3’s flagship store, which will serve as a one-stop, highly ‘Instagram-able’ fashion destination. The store aims to offer layered experiences, including a walk-in wardrobe, a glam station, an in-store cafe, and a photo-booth amongst others revolutionising the traditional store experience and redefining the relationship a brand shares with its customer from being functional to highly engaged and experiential.

In the near future, Sanchit envisions Stage3 as being the future of fashion – one where people would rent pieces with high social obsolescence and invest into versatile pieces that can be worn across seasons, leading a sustainable fashion revolution in the country. He has plans in place to increase the company’s offline footprint to 40 experiential styling rooms, strengthen its data capabilities, and diversify into new product categories and international expansion to the UK, US and Singapore. Armed with such developments, within the next five years, Sanchit sees Stage3 becoming an integral part of the millennial closet, by leading the fashion sharing economy in India.