Welcome to Richa Bansal Consults
Richa Bansal Consults provides an array of consultancy services ranging from devising retail strategies and formulating branding blueprints to developing in-house communications and codifying sustainability policies.
‘MSP Isn’t Distorting Prices’: CCI Head on Imports, Yields, and the Road to Cotton Stability
The single largest cotton trading company and a public sector undertaking under the Union Ministry of Textiles, the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), established in 1970, undertakes price support and commercial purchase operations to safeguard the economic interest of farmers in the cotton growing regions and to ensure its smooth supply to the textile industry. A Q&A with its Chairman-Cum-Managing Director, Lalit Kumar Gupta.
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About Richa Bansal
A keen observer of fashion since her early childhood, the style of the ‘bindi’ as it moved up and centre of the film heroine’s forehead, the cut of the kurtis, she commented on all once home, sometimes admonished by her parents. She started her career at a local daily in Guwahati, informally editor-in-charge of the weekly supplements barely three months after she had joined the publication.
Thereafter it was the Press Trust of India, the then premier news agency, Times Internet Ltd (TIL), the dotcom division of the Times of India Group, and then the complete change of path which had more or less begun at TIL to B2B journals on fashion — from Images Business of Fashion to Shoes & Accessories and as India Launch Editor of the iconic Sportswear International, she moved on to Fibre2Fashion.
While at TIL’s 8888 she was instrumental in setting the foundations of content for a very new category of content in sms format, at the B2B journal she was responsible for turning around content and design to make them emerge as the voice of the industry. Post-COVID saw her go entrepreneurial as she cofounded texfash.com, a digital publication that explores the business of textile-apparel-fashion-footwear-accessories industry through the prism of sustainability.
- Richa Bansal has more than 30 years of mainstream media industry experience, of which the last 14+ years have been with leading fashion magazines—both B2B and B2C—preceded by prolific work with newspapers, wire services and news portals.
- Richa is the first person to conceptualise and direct an India-centric glocal forecast for the industry. She can take credit for being among the handful, if not the only person who pushed for Indian seasons instead of Fall-Winter. It will be a while yet before the industry realises that India really does not have a Fall!
- She was Launch Editor of the Indian edition of the iconic Sportswear International.
- Richa has been at the helm of a slew of premium B2B magazines (all in the fashion domain) since 2003, in one of India’s leading B2B media conglomerates, which has a prominent presence across magazines, events and websites.
- In the past, Richa has led a content team in the mobile value-added services space (8888) of the Times of India Group.
- Richa has firm roots in news and features journalism, having worked with the Times of India Group, India Abroad News Service and Press Trust of India in the past.
Inkpots! Sigh!
A hot cup of ginger-laced tea with a crisp newspaper is how I best like to start my day. But the idiot box, spouting news from every possible channel, has ensured that I do not crave for the reams of black ink first thing in the morning. More so since I moved to higher realms to where I must climb some 50-odd curving, at-times-steep stairs. The newspaper boy leaves my set on the boundary wall...
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The World of Fashion
- As Executive Editor at Images Business of Fashion, Richa was instrumental in inducing the industry to think and take up fashion forecasts with a keen eye on Indian seasons and aesthetics instead of blindly following forecasts from European or American forecast agencies.
- Richa is the first person to conceptualise and direct an India-centric glocal forecast for the industry. She can take credit for being among the handful, if not the only person who pushed for Indian seasons instead of Fall-Winter. It will be a while yet before the industry realises that India really does not have a Fall!
- The continued push to the industry through a sustained series of articles and interviews had brands and designers eyeing the monsoons with a very different mind set. Where monsoon was always a lean period on the retail front, some brands and designers now come up with special collections.
- Was among the first few to identify the coming up of fashion knowledge outsourcing centres with India emerging as a major hub.
- Launched the Indian edition of the iconic Sportswear International. This quarterly publication was the first of its kind to cater to the B2B market but with a B2C twist. Almost 80 per cent of content was generated in-house.
- Coined the term Indutvas for apparel of Indian origin instead of ethnicwear. Again, this has not yet gained currency.
- Revamped editorial content and look of the portal fibre2fashion.com and eponymous monthly publication.
- Give directions to marketing in tapping new ad revenue sources through content specially enabled for the purpose.
- Revamped editorial content and look of Shoes & Accessories, the flagship publication of Images Access Multimedia Pvt Ltd, and premier publication catering to the footwear and accessories, and lifestyle accessories industries.
- The magazine, high on glam but sans focused content, has now emerged as a must-read for industry professionals. The glam quotient too has upped with specially directed fashion shoots and other pictorial content.
- Set foundations of content for an India-International mix with B2C leanings and B2B focus.
- Networked with top international and national fashion brands across lifestyle categories for interviews, sourcing of products for shoots, etc
- Liaised with Sportswear International's editorial headquarters for India/Asia-relevant inputs for stories, content plans, among other things.
- Created a new base of contributors for both editorial content and fashion shoots.
- Responsible for all editorial content published in flagship publication of Images Multimedia Pvt Ltd. IMAGES Business of Fashion (IMAGES BoF) is today the premier publication catering to the fashion, textile and apparel industries.
- The magazine, which lacked a professional outlook especially in terms of content, has now grown in stature and is looked up as the last word on the three sectors by industry captains. The dour-reading publication has been transformed into a highly readable and insightful periodical, something that now industry professionals look forward to reading.