How XYXX built a Rs 300 crore business in India’s innerwear market

The Indian men’s innerwear market has never been short of noise. It is crowded, entrenched in habitual preferences, and shaped by decades of sameness. Familiar brands dominate shelf space, familiar faces dominate packaging, and familiar ideas of masculinity dominate communication. Innovation, when it appears, tends to be incremental rather than transformative.

Against this backdrop, XYXX stands out not because it has rewritten the rules overnight, but because it has grown quickly in a category that resists change. Founded in 2017, the brand is today a Rs 300-plus crore business, growing at around 100% year-on-year. 

Interestingly, it has also achieved profitability at the Contribution Margin 2 level, and built a balanced 50:50 revenue split between online and offline channels.

With presence across more than 22,000 retail touchpoints, a high-performing D2C platform, leading marketplaces, and quick commerce apps, XYXX has reached a scale that makes its journey worth examining.

Founded by entrepreneur Yogesh Kabra, XYXX entered the category without attempting to outspend or outshout incumbents.

Petal Gangurde, chief brand culture officer at XYXX, says the brand was conscious early on that it was operating in a space shaped more by habit than curiosity. 

“We were a challenger brand,” she says. “There was no real brand that existed in the way we think of branding today. Even the packaging was purely functional. Printed was printed. Solid was solid.”

Building a brand from scratch

When Gangurde joined the company in 2019, XYXX was still largely unknown beyond e-commerce. Larger incumbents, such as Jockey and Van Heusen, dominate mindshare, while the unorganised sector continued to command significant volume through reach and price.

The challenge, she says, was not just competition but the absence of meaningful brand thinking in the category.

“There was no positioning,” Gangurde says. “There was no real thought around how men discovered product differences or why they should care.”

XYXX began by focusing on fabric innovation, particularly Modal, a material unfamiliar to many Indian consumers accustomed to cotton.

The promise was functionality without compromise, including moisture-wicking, quick-drying, odour control, temperature regulation, and easy-care finishes. But introducing a new fabric is not straightforward.

“Modal itself was a category change for people,” Gangurde says. “There was resistance, and a lot of explaining needed to be done.”

Education became central to the brand’s strategy, as did the decision to treat innerwear not as a commodity but as a designed product suited to the Indian climate, body types, and daily routines.

Rewriting category codes

As XYXX began to articulate its identity, it quickly rejected the dominant codes of the category. Traditional masculinity, chest-thumping bravado, and aspirational corporate success do not resonate with the audience the brand wants to speak to.

“Modern Indian men were not aspiring to either,” Gangurde says, referring to macho imagery on one end and corner-office ambition on the other. Late millennials and Gen Z consumers, she adds, are more interested in comfort, authenticity, and products that fit seamlessly into everyday life.

This insight shapes the brand’s communication style. Functional clarity replaces posturing. “Men don’t have patience for nonsense,” Gangurde says.

“If we were talking about differentiation, we had to be very direct about what the fabric does and how the product is made.”

At the time, few innerwear brands communicated this way. Many do now. Then, it helped XYXX carve out a distinct voice.

Digital first, then everywhere

Budget constraints reinforced this direction. As a funded startup, XYXX did not have the luxury of large television campaigns in its early years. Gangurde says the limitations forced the brand to prioritise substance over spectacle.

“Would we have liked to do TVCs? Of course,” she says. “But being constrained meant we had to build substance first.” That focus proved timely.

When Covid-19 disrupted general trade in 2020, XYXX was already well-positioned in e-commerce and its own D2C platform. What could have been a setback became an accelerant.

“General trade was not functional,” Gangurde says. “Because we had already cemented our position on digital, it actually gave us a tailwind.”

The brand’s presence across marketplaces and D2C strengthened, helping it build recall and volume while competitors scrambled to adapt.

Speed, convenience, and the rise of quick commerce

Quick commerce became the next inflexion point. XYXX expanded to platforms such as Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, Zepto, and Flipkart Minutes across 20 cities. The results were immediate.

The brand recorded 20% month-on-month growth, crossed Rs 1.5 crore in sales within the first quarter, and emerged as the second-largest innerwear brand on Blinkit.

“Blinkit today is comparable to Amazon for us,” Gangurde says, underlining how central immediacy has become to the category.

Quick commerce is particularly strong in northern markets such as Delhi NCR, Ludhiana, and Lucknow, while D2C performs best in metro cities including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Delhi. Marketplaces deliver national scale, with the brand remaining strongest in the north and west.

Substance over spectacle

Celebrity endorsement came later, and with caution. In 2022, XYXX onboarded KL Rahul as its first brand ambassador for innerwear and loungewear and also brought him on board as an investor.

Gangurde says the decision is rooted in alignment rather than visibility. “He stands for the same values we do,” she says. “He has carved out a very distinct identity, and that mattered more than noise.”

The association helped broaden awareness, but the brand continues to anchor its communication in functionality and credibility rather than celebrity-led storytelling.

Making room for premium in a neglected category

Premiumisation is another steady thread in XYXX’s evolution. Innerwear, Gangurde argues, has long been treated as a category where consumers do not expect or seek premium value.

“Underwear was seen as a funny, slightly dirty category,” she says. “People didn’t believe premiumisation was even possible.”

XYXX challenged this misconception through product and content innovation. A notable example is the Invisible Vest, a product designed to eliminate visible lines under white clothing.

“You could be wearing the best white trousers,” Gangurde says, “but the vest inside would make it look sub-premium. We wanted to fix that”.

The launch was supported by product-led imagery that treats innerwear like fashion. The Invisible Vest went on to become one of the brand’s best-selling products.

Channels, creators, and the long game

Influencer marketing follows a similar philosophy. XYXX began forging long-term relationships with creators well before influencer marketing became crowded.

“Some of the creators we signed had five or seven thousand followers,” Gangurde says. “We grew with them, and they grew with us.”

Today, the brand operates as a deeply omnichannel business, with nearly 70% of revenue coming from marketplaces, quick commerce, and D2C combined.

Media spends are concentrated on Meta, supported by Google and YouTube, while platform advertising and listing optimisation play a critical role in driving conversion.

Distribution, without romanticism

Despite its digital skew, offline distribution has always been part of XYXX’s plan. Gangurde says the company originally expected to be far more offline-led.

“We were actually geared to become an offline brand,” she says. “The focus was to build general trade first.”

That strategy resulted in expansion across nearly 25,000 general trade stores, starting with the top 50 cities and guided by competitor performance at a per-store level. Modern trade partnerships follow, with presence across chains such as Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle.

Over time, however, the economics of offline retail shifted. “If a store was doing ten lakh rupees two or three years ago, today it might be doing five,” Gangurde says, pointing to a broader category slowdown.

As a result, XYXX pared back direct marketing spends in general trade, replacing them with regional influencers and geo-targeted campaigns. 

Offline remains important, but it is no longer sentimentalised. Each channel is expected to justify its role through performance.

Growth beyond innerwear

Increasingly, growth is coming from outside the brand’s original core. Outerwear has emerged as a meaningful driver, particularly over the past winter.

“Winter has been an amazing period for us,” Gangurde says. “We’ve been building this assortment year on year.”

Product strategies are designed by channel. Beanies and thermals perform well on quick commerce and general trade, while hoodies and canvas jackets gain traction on D2C. Marketing and content are planned accordingly, ensuring relevance rather than uniformity.

The expansion, however, requires patience. Convincing consumers to buy a Rs 3,000 jacket from a brand they associate with Rs 300 briefs is a gradual process.

What comes next?

Looking ahead, XYXX plans to double down on outerwear while staying anchored to credibility-led launches.

“Everything we are making, the market doesn’t really have,” Gangurde says. “So the way we launch and communicate becomes critical.”

Instead of scripted campaigns, the brand is leaning further into creator-led, hook-based content that adapts a single product USP across multiple formats and audiences.