Sisters Niki and Ritika Shamdasani launched Sani when they spotted a large gap in the market: 82% of South Asian Americans travel abroad to buy wedding attire. They recognized the business opportunity—but didn’t have the capital to bring their vision to life. With limited funds, they had to get creative, leveraging grants, competitions, and strategic cold emails to secure funding while maintaining control over their business.
Starting with just 15 pieces designed in their own sizes (“In case we failed, we would just have clothes for days,” Ritika jokes), the sisters took an unconventional approach to raising capital.
From 2020 to 2023, they raised $100,000 from college grants, another $100,000 from a startup accelerator program, and a third $100,000 from angel investors. In 2020 they launched a groundbreaking partnership as Rent the Runway’s first South Asian fashion brand, later expanding to Nordstrom and its online store.
The Cofounders sat down with the Shopify Masters podcast to share how they secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding through unconventional strategies.
Becoming a “professional stalker” to find funding opportunities
Ritika was in college when Sani launched, but she made securing funding her daily mission. “You have to be a really good stalker,” she explains. “Literally keep a pulse on everything that’s going on."
That persistence led her to unexpected opportunities—like a $25,000 prize from a competition at Smith College, a school she hadn’t even heard of before. “If you had asked me where Smith College was, I would have been like, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she admits.
Looking beyond obvious sources can open doors. Research competitions, grants, and business accelerators—especially those outside your immediate network. Set up Google Alerts for terms like “entrepreneurship competition” and “startup grant,” or join entrepreneur groups where members share funding opportunities and contacts.
Leveraging local resources
National competitions offer larger prizes, but Niki emphasizes the value of local funding sources. “A portion of that $110,000 in non-dilutive funding was from an organization called NC IDEA, which helps fund North Carolina businesses,” she shares.
Nearly every state, county, and major city has economic development initiatives designed to support small businesses. These programs often have less competition than national opportunities and come with additional perks like mentorship or local connections.
Tailoring your pitch
The sisters quickly learned that different funding sources have different priorities, and tailoring their pitch accordingly was vital to securing capital. “All [the pitch competitions] have different focuses, but I think what was so amazing about our brand is there’s so many ways you can look at it,” Ritika explains. “We could really hone in on the whole fashion manufacturing side of things if they were interested in how we’re doing it in a more responsible way. So we were able to also go for the more sustainable, responsible competitions—and then there was the whole doing something with culture. That was a great angle for us as well."
Research each organization’s core values and past winners. Understanding what matters to the judges will help you craft a pitch that stands out.
Shooting your shot (Cold emails with a strategic twist)
One of Sani’s biggest breaks didn’t come from a grant—it came from a cold email to Rent the Runway CEO Jen Hyman in 2020.
“We are the biggest proponents of sending cold emails, as much as you possibly can,” Niki says. One tactic that worked in their favor? Using a .edu email address. “If you send a cold email from a school email, the chances of getting a reply are even higher.”
Through a part-time position at UNC Chapel Hill, Niki had access to a university email address, which she used to contact Hyman. Instead of simply asking for help, she framed the partnership as a market opportunity for Rent the Runway.
“We ended up posing it as, this is how big the South Asian wedding market is in the US, and nobody’s really serving that right now. And in addition to that, here are actual screenshots from customers of ours saying, ‘Can you provide a rental option?’” This approach—combining market data with evidence of real customer demand—proved effective, and the brand has skyrocketed in popularity since.
Niki suggests making cold outreach a habit. “Every day, every week if you can, keep a running list of the people you’d want to cold email,” she says, “and every day try and send at least one, because you’re increasing your shots on goal. That’s really how you increase your surface area for luck in general.”
Starting small and using data to attract more investment
Rather than seeking large investments upfront or all from one source, the Shamdasani sisters took a calculated approach. They grew inventory slowly, minimizing risk while maximizing learning.
“We always start with low order quantities,” Ritika explains. “As much as we both have really strong guts on like, ‘This product is going to do amazing,’ half the time we’re wrong, and it’s the product you didn’t think would do amazing that really takes off.” Their solution? “The only way we’ve learned to protect ourselves is to honestly start with like 50 units of a product, see how that goes, and then reorder.”
This way they aren’t investing all the available capital into one idea or style. Taking the data-driven approach to slow growth appealed to funders, showing they were capital-efficient and willing to iterate based on feedback. Showing potential funders how you’re maximizing limited resources and making informed decisions goes a long way in securing investments.
Diving into entrepreneurship means taking on financial risks—but as Niki puts it, “You have to choose your hard. I don’t think any job ever is easy, and obviously some are even harder than others.” She contrasts her experience in corporate life with running Sani. “It was very hard for me to imagine being in a place where I couldn’t really execute—where other people were all in charge of that. Something that felt less hard, in some strange way, was [thinking], ‘OK, so let’s do a thing from scratch where your impact is seen in every single thing you do every single day.’”
Raising capital doesn’t always mean following a traditional venture capital path. Creative funding sources—competitions, grants, strategic partnerships—can provide the resources to grow while keeping control of your business.
As Niki puts it, securing funding is about “increasing your shots on goal” through consistent, strategic outreach.
