Alia Bhatt co-founded Ed-a-Mamma as a sustainable kidswear brand in 2020. The brand later recorded ₹32.3 crore in FY23 revenue before Reliance Retail acquired a 51% stake.
While most celebrities launched fashion brands for adults with high visibility and quick volume, Alia Bhatt built one for children and mothers, in a sustainable fabric, on a D2C model and Reliance Retail noticed before anyone else did.
Topic tags: Celebrity Startups • Sustainable Fashion • D2C • Indian Startup Story
Established by renowned Indian actress Alia Bhatt, Ed-a-Mamma is a sustainable clothing brand specialising in maternity wear and eco-friendly fashion for children aged from 2 to 14 years. Founded in 2020 and currently valued at $11.9 million, the brand’s revenue of Rs 32.3 crore in FY23 spiked by 99% from Rs 16.2 crore in FY22.
The 99 percent year-on-year revenue growth in FY23 was not noise. It triggered a strategic event in September 2023, Reliance Retail Ventures announced that it had entered into a joint venture with Ed-a-Mamma to acquire a 51% stake, claiming to maximize the clothing brand’s management strength and the expansion of its business portfolio.
The Story: Sustainable Children’s Fashion Built on a D2C Model
Ed-a-Mamma was co-founded by Alia Bhatt and her close friend Akansha Ranjan Kapoor in 2020, launching during the pandemic as a purely online brand (Bollywood Hungama, April 2024). The founding category choice was deliberate and specific: sustainable kidswear and maternity fashion for a market where the dominant players were either global fast-fashion brands with no sustainability credentials or premium international labels priced out of the Indian middle class’s reach.
The brand’s sustainability positioning was not a brand-layer addition. Ed-a-Mamma’s products use natural fabrics, organic materials, and dyes that are designed to be gentle on children’s sensitive skin a functional claim that carries more purchase-intent weight with parents than a generic sustainability badge. In a category where the consumer making the purchase (the parent) is buying for someone else (the child), safety and material integrity are category-defining attributes, not optional differentiators.
Ed-a-Mamma was launched in 2022 for public launch, with the company founded and built through 2020-21 before its formal retail debut. Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani star Alia Bhatt launched her own brand Ed-a-Mamma in April 2021 focusing on maternity clothing and kidswear.
The D2C-first model kept distribution costs low in the early years, allowing the brand to invest in product quality and the celebrity marketing that Alia’s following made more efficient than for a non-celebrity brand. By FY23, that investment had produced a 99 percent revenue jump the signal that convinced Reliance Retail the brand had found genuine product-market fit before it had saturated its addressable market.
People Also Ask
What is Ed-a-Mamma? Ed-a-Mamma is a sustainable kidswear and maternity fashion brand co-founded by Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt in 2020. It specialises in eco-friendly clothing for children aged 2 to 14 and maternity wear, built on a D2C model using natural and organic materials (Infomance, September 2024).
Who co-founded Ed-a-Mamma with Alia Bhatt? Ed-a-Mamma was co-founded by Alia Bhatt and her close friend Akansha Ranjan Kapoor (Bollywood Hungama, April 2024).
Did Reliance acquire Ed-a-Mamma? In September 2023, Reliance Retail Ventures announced it had entered a joint venture with Ed-a-Mamma, acquiring a 51% stake to expand the brand’s management and business portfolio.
What was Ed-a-Mamma’s revenue in FY23? Ed-a-Mamma’s revenue reached Rs 32.3 crore in FY23, a 99% increase from Rs 16.2 crore in FY22.
Is Ed-a-Mamma a sustainable brand? Yes. Ed-a-Mamma uses natural fabrics, organic materials, and gentle dyes specifically formulated for children’s sensitive skin. The sustainability positioning is functional rather than purely marketing-led (Infomance, September 2024).
Quick Facts
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2020 | Infomance, September 2024 |
| Co-founders | Alia Bhatt, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor | Bollywood Hungama, April 2024 |
| Category | Sustainable kidswear (ages 2-14) and maternity wear | Infomance, September 2024 |
| Revenue FY22 | Rs 16.2 crore | Infomance, September 2024 |
| Revenue FY23 | Rs 32.3 crore (99% YoY growth) | Infomance, September 2024 |
| Valuation | $11.9 million | Infomance, September 2024 |
| Reliance acquisition | 51% stake joint venture, September 2023 | Infomance, September 2024 |
| Distribution model | D2C first, then Reliance retail network | Karo Startup, July 2025 |
Why Reliance Retail Bought In
A 99 percent year-on-year revenue jump in a niche category does not happen by accident. The Reliance Retail acquisition of 51 percent equity was a direct outcome of Ed-a-Mamma demonstrating three things simultaneously: genuine repeat purchase behaviour in a category (kidswear) where loyalty is high once established, a sustainability differentiation that is defensible against fast-fashion competitors, and a founder identity Alia Bhatt whose public profile was simultaneously on the most commercially powerful trajectory in Indian cinema in 2022 and 2023.
Reliance Retail’s acquisition playbook consistently targets brands that have achieved D2C product-market fit and then turbocharges their distribution through Reliance’s offline retail network, digital channels, and supply chain relationships. Ed-a-Mamma gave Reliance a premium sustainable kidswear brand with proven organic growth and a founder who doubled as its most effective marketing channel exactly the combination Reliance has repeatedly paid for.
The Risks
Niche market ceiling. Sustainable kidswear for children aged 2 to 14 is a focused segment. As Ed-a-Mamma scales through Reliance’s distribution, it will eventually face the question of whether to stay niche and deepen or expand into adjacent categories (teen fashion, adult women’s sustainable wear) each of which introduces new competitive dynamics.
Founder visibility as a growth dependency. Alia Bhatt’s growing stature in Indian cinema made Ed-a-Mamma’s marketing unusually efficient in 2022 and 2023. As the brand scales through Reliance’s distribution, it needs to develop brand equity that operates independently of moment-to-moment media coverage of its founder.
Integration risk with Reliance. Becoming 51 percent owned by one of India’s largest conglomerates changes a brand’s decision-making speed, culture, and strategic priorities. Brands that enter large-group joint ventures sometimes lose the founder-driven agility that produced the original growth.
The Bottom Line
Ed-a-Mamma’s story is about the compounding effect of three decisions made simultaneously and correctly: a niche category with high repeat purchase and low celebrity brand competition, a sustainability positioning with functional credibility, and a founder whose career trajectory amplified the brand’s visibility at exactly the right moment. Reliance Retail spotted all three before the market did. The 51 percent acquisition was not a rescue; it was a scaling bet on a brand that had already proven it could grow.
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