“Making ethics accessible through very affordable prices”

The brand, created almost 10 years ago, has just opened its first store, in Paris. And continues to highlight its social vocation, by participating in the emancipation of Indian women employed through an NGO.

In 2012, Pierre Monnier, then a business student, joined forces with an Indian NGO to create small canvas bags, tote bags, for business communication.

Three years later, the Hindbag brand was born. And in 2019, the “bananas and backpacks” activity was launched. With tens of thousands of sales at stake. Mainly on the Internet, even if Hindbag now has a store in Paris, in addition to multiple points of sale. The brand recorded, in 2023, 7 million euros in turnover.

Banana fashion

To explain this success, Isabelle Spiri, the director of Hindbag, highlights the return of “banana fashion”. “We were one of the first, in recent years, to make this product,” she says. Hindbag’s strength, according to the leader: “making ethics accessible through very affordable prices”.

Working for the emancipation of Indian women

From the outset, Hindbag’s mission is ecological and supportive. The brand works with an Indian NGO, based in New Delhi, which works for the emancipation of women. “We recruit women from disadvantaged neighborhoods in north Delhi. We train them in sewing, at first they don’t know how to do anything. And they improve their skills over the years. explains Isabelle Spiri.

These women are paid about three times the average Indian salary. And their children are educated in a school within the NGO. Is this alliance with this NGO a pretext to produce cheaper in India? Not at all, defends the director of Hindbag, who assures that “Producing in India, within an NGO, does not cost less than producing in France.”