Changing Identity Of Shahpur Jat

While new companies continue to favour the Delhi shopping district, Shahpur Jat finds it difficult to stand out in the cutthroat retail environment.

The womenswear company Nitya Bajaj, run by designer Nitya Birla, reduced its retail activities in Shahpur Jat last month and converted the studio, which was 11 years old, into an e-commerce fulfilment centre. While Birla is still in the process of choosing a location for the new store, she has made Shahpur Jat, a market teeming with freelance embroiderers, dyers, pattern makers, small garment factories, and boutique designer studios, her first home. So why do you want to go? “For businesses that are exploring new avenues or expanding, Shahpur Jat is getting saturated with a mishmash of brands. This ends up being confusing in terms of brand identity and positioning,” she says.

Birla is alluding to a jumble of retail establishments that have altered Shahpur Jat's appearance during the past ten years. In addition to office spaces and several vendors, the market, which is situated in South Delhi adjacent to upscale residential districts like Panchsheel Park, currently houses over 200 retail stores in the fashion, culinary, décor, and furnishing sectors. It provides a cornucopia of possibilities for fashion customers, including "famous" A-listers, boutique businesses with Instagram cred, and companies you might not be familiar with. Its wide range of options also contributes to its popularity. According to Vrinda Sachdev, co-founder of Indianwear brand Qbik, which opened a store in the neighbourhood in 2011, "the fact that a visitor may buy across price points and for every occasion—not only for high budget weddings—is a major reason why the sector has grown." Despite Sachdev's apparent optimism for Shahpur Jat's retail future, she shares Birla's worries about everything from the market's specific operational issues to the contradiction in the market's identity.

The Evolving Dynamics

The first phase of the statewide shutdown to stop the spread of COVID-19 began in May 2020, and like many other shopping districts, Shahpur Jat found it difficult to get going. In the same month, The Voice of Fashion published an article with opinions and forecasts about the industry's future and several designers' worries. These included overhead costs that kept eating into profits despite no sales and the idea of social isolation, which was necessary to stop the virus' spread but was only a pipe dream due to the cramped environment. Similar issues in many shopping centres may have existed at the time, but Shahpur's particular anatomy made it more difficult.

The problems are caused by the market's status as an urban village, where the majority of the properties are owned by long-term members of the Jat community. Due to the "shared" and homogenous decisions the villagers typically make as landlords, some, like Birla, think this community-driven model crucial to its economy. Others consider the approach to be complex, with holes in the infrastructure's or safety's compliance with industry requirements. It follows a similar design to other urban-rural regions that are part of the Lal Dora scheme, which dates back to the early 20th century and was initially intended to separate the residential sections from the agricultural space in Delhi's villages. Historically, these areas have been excluded from both commercial bylaws and local ordinances. Even though Shahpur Jat is centrally located on maps of Delhi, "on paper, Shahpur Jat is considered a village, with none of the legal compliances applicable," says designer Karan Torani, who established his studio there in 2018 before leaving and establishing a factory in Noida's industrial area in April 2021.

The National Capital Region Planning Board recommended earlier this year that these areas be placed under the control of the government's city planners, the Delhi Development Authority.

Fuelling Emerging Talent

Shahpur Jat continues to nurture up-and-coming talent seeking to succeed in a cutthroat industry, despite logistics being a pain for many enterprises, particularly those who have made the leap from small to middle to large scale businesses. "I have a deep love and emotional connection to Shahpur because I started my adventure there in a tiny room, and we grew together. For us, it was the location where everything came together, according to Torani.

Younger companies based in the area benefit from the neighborhood's mobility and availability of autonomous workers. "We began operations in 2015, and one of the key factors in our decision to locate there was its accessibility, particularly to NCR regions like Noida and Gurugram. The conscientious clothing brand Theorem writes in an email that rentals are reasonable and manageable even for sustainable businesses, adding that the holiday season is a deal-breaker for company.

Shahpur Jat's "feel" and the culture-community-fashion discourse that ranges from billboards welcoming consumers to "Fashion Street" and "Designer Street" to the exclusive pedestrian-only area Dada Jungi Lane inspire certain people as well. "Mirakin was established in May 2015, and a year later, we moved our studio to Shahpur Jat, where we have been ever since. According to Shailja Choudhary, creative director at the company that sells 3D printed jewellery with an emphasis on repurposed sterling silver, "For us, it was the entire fashion culture and mood and of course the wonderful market space." She continues by saying that while the epidemic reduced foot traffic, it also resulted in a spike in "serious" customers.

Visiting Shahpur in 2021

With the pandemic update of masked faces, food hawkers with gloved hands, and sanitizers at numerous shop windows, a bustling crowd lines the sinuous passageways and sharp crevices of the market on a Saturday afternoon near the end of November. Dreamcatchers are hung amid the tangle of power wires above, but there are also areas with colourful graffiti alongside handwritten signs advertising khaka masters, garment finishing services, and dry cleaners. Maggi and chai stands continue to coexist with boutique labels like Khajanchi, Gaurav Gupta (not the fashion designer), Bhavya Basin, Paaki, and Shiva Jangra, who predominately sell wedding apparel.

So, what comes next for Shahpur?

Sachdev thinks that the appeal of Shahpur Jat will continue to be fueled by the luxury of choice it offers, despite Qbik recently opening a new store at Dhan Mill Compound—the gated shopping complex in the Chattarpur neighbourhood where premium fashion and design brands share space with gourmet coffee houses and chocolatiers. Birla, meantime, does not believe that the area is affected by the "Hauz Khaz Village syndrome," which saw the once-bustling market experience a retail fizzle-out over the past five years. She continues by saying that even though the overall mix of brands and goods may change, Shahpur as a market is still very much relevant.

“The landscape of the area has changed and will continue to change because that’s what fashion is about. Restructuring and re-establishing people, places and the past,” says Torani, highlighting Shahpur Jat's transitory character, which may have helped it be more robust to changing retail topographies even as we renegotiate our relationship with cosy shops and busy marketplaces.

#mustvisitstores, #delhidesignerstores, #fashiondesignerdelhi, #delhidesigner, #labelnityabajaj, #nityabajaj, #nityabajajoutfit, #nityabajajofficial, #mustvisitdehli, #delhistore, #fashiondesigner, #delhifashion