From a Frustrated Shopping Trip to a Rs 3 Crore Valuation: How Story Tailor Kids Grew With Parul University’s PIERC

Some businesses begin with a plan; Story Tailor Kids began with frustration. Krishna Siddhpura, an instrumentation engineer with twelve years at Ingersoll Rand, had stepped away from her corporate career after becoming a mother. Shopping for her son’s clothes, she found a gap: almost nothing on the shelves felt connected to Indian culture. That observation became a brand, and, with the backing of Parul University’s PIERC, a genuine startup success story.

Krishna was precise about what was missing from the kidswear market. First, it was saturated with Western characters and prints. Second, it leaned heavily on synthetic fabrics, not ideal for children’s skin. And third, very few brands worked with India’s own cultural and textile diversity, striking, she noted, for the world’s largest cotton producer. The solution drew on how she and her husband, a Baroda-trained artist, were themselves raised: in joint families where storytelling was woven into everyday life, teaching values quietly rather than through lectures.

The insight that made the brand was simple: a book is easy for a child to set aside, but clothes are worn every day. So Story Tailor (a name she is quick to clarify, they stitch stories into garments, so it is Story Tailor, not “Storyteller”) prints Indian folktales, mythology, and Panchatantra stories onto skin-safe cotton nightwear, with collections like the Hare & Tortoise and Monkey & Crocodile lines. Several products pair the garment with a flip-book or story tag, so a child can connect the print to a real moral tale. The tagline, “Wear Stories, Grow Values,” captures her deeper motivation: in an age of AI tools, she wants this generation to stay connected to its roots and the values she grew up with, humility, kindness, and morals learned through story.

Neither founder came from a textile or fashion background, so they built the capability from scratch. After relocating from Mumbai to Baroda (her husband’s “dream city,” where he had studied fine arts), they spent roughly a year and a half on groundwork before selling anything: hiring a fashion designer to teach them about fabric, travelling to Ahmedabad, Pethapur, and Jaipur to learn traditional printing, and, in Krishna’s case, even learning to stitch herself before the brand hired its first tailors. The brand now sells through Amazon, FirstCry, and Myntra, and directly at exhibitions and pop-ups.

Krishna is refreshingly candid about setbacks, and names three. An early order of hand-block-printed fabric went wrong, costing the brand 300 to 400 metres of material, a shock they turned into a lesson (and a secondary product line, upcycling the fabric into toys and bedding). A lost Fulfilled-by-Amazon shipment cost around Rs 20,000. And a marketing agency that promised to multiply their growth badly underdelivered, costing them orders and time. The through-line of her response is resilience and a hard-won discipline she now lives by.

If somebody had guided me when we started, that you test it in small batches and then scale up, rather than introducing everything at once, it would have saved me so much time and effort.
– Krishna Siddhpura, on her biggest lesson

Krishna’s business education came not from a classroom but from incubation. A turning point was being selected for the NSRCEL Women Startup Programme at IIM Bangalore, a roughly year-long programme covering every aspect of business. Winning the TiE Women Chapter 2025 for the Vadodara region was, in her words, life-changing, earning her a place representing Baroda at the TiE Global competition in Jaipur in January 2026, among some fifty women founders from around the world. It was through the TiE competition that she first discovered PIERC, Parul University’s incubation centre, and realised she did not have to navigate the journey alone.

PIERC, Krishna says, was monumental. It played three concrete roles: connecting her with investors through organised events and meetings; coaching her through the Startup India Seed Fund application, which led to a Rs 30 lakh grant commitment; and giving her access to startup infrastructure, a network of fellow founders, and on-call mentorship from named mentors (Junaid, Hardik, and Pancham).

Parul University has been very helpful in getting us connections, organising events, and meeting with investors. They prepared us for the Startup India Seed Fund, and with their support we received a grant commitment of Rs 30 lakh. They have been monumental.
– Krishna Siddhpura

That ecosystem also helped build the investor relationships behind her wider milestones. PIERC celebrated another when Story Tailor raised angel investment at a Rs 3 crore valuation, a marker of genuine investor confidence in a brand that began as one mother’s idea.

Over roughly four years, Story Tailor has assembled a striking record of funding and recognition:

• A Rs 75 lakh investment deal secured through the IDEABAAZ platform.
• Rs 70 lakh in revenue, reflecting real commercial traction.
• A Rs 30 lakh grant commitment through the Startup India Seed Fund, facilitated with PIERC’s support.
• A Rs 10 lakh grant from the Government of Gujarat, recognising the brand’s socially impactful model.
• TiE Women Chapter 2025 winner (Vadodara region), and representation at TiE Global, Jaipur.

Story Tailor remains a hands-on, family-led operation, run alongside her husband, with her son (whom she calls almost a partner) part of a studio-office she built around his school schedule. Having been let down by outside agencies, she now handles much of the marketing herself while building an in-house team. And her guiding principle in every investor conversation is radical honesty.

You should be very clear about what you want to do, and very open about what has gone wrong so far, so the person investing in you can trust you.
– Krishna Siddhpura