Startup Deep Dive : Neeman’s — the sustainable shoe brand still losing money after eight years

Neeman’s sells shoes on the promise of a smaller footprint — merino wool from Australia, recycled PET soles, castor-bean-oil linings — yet in FY25 it still spent ₹1.24 to earn every ₹1 of revenue, per Registrar of Companies filings reported by Startuppedia in February 2026. A brand built on being efficient with the planet’s materials has spent eight fiscal years being inefficient with its own capital, posting a net loss in every one of them even as revenue crossed ₹108 crore (about $11.3 million, at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics).

The contradiction resolves in an unlikely place. Rather than chase a greener fibre or a cheaper ad channel, Neeman’s answer to its widening losses has been to open physical stores — 18 of them by mid-2025, with a plan for 500 by the end of the decade. This piece traces how a Hyderabad D2C brand that started as one man’s frustration with packing shoes for a European trip ended up betting its next phase of growth on real estate instead of another sustainable material.

Quick facts

What they do

Neeman’s makes and sells everyday footwear positioned around natural and recycled materials rather than pure synthetics — merino wool sneakers and loafers, cotton and recycled-PET sneakers, flip-flops and slides, formal shoes, and more recently an apparel line, priced roughly between ₹2,999 and ₹6,999. The customer is the urban Indian professional who wants one pair of shoes that works for a commute, a casual outing and a long day on their feet, rather than a wardrobe of task-specific footwear — the same problem that prompted the company’s founding. It sells through its own website, third-party marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra), quick commerce (Zepto), and, since mid-2023, a growing network of company-run exclusive brand stores that numbered 18 by June 2025 and is being scaled toward 500 over the next few years.

The origin

The idea traces to a trip across Spain, where Taran Chhabra — a business analytics professional who had studied computer science in the United States and worked with pharma and life-sciences firms in New Jersey — nearly missed a train while agonising over which shoes to pack: running shoes, casual shoes, lounging shoes, and a spare pair just in case. The question that stayed with him was simple — why didn’t one pair exist that could do all of that. Back in India, he brought the problem to Amar Preet Singh, an operations specialist with over a decade running start-ups, and the two spent close to two years visiting shoe-manufacturing hubs around the world before deciding synthetic materials were the wrong starting point. They settled on merino wool from Australia — naturally odour-resistant, breathable across seasons, and renewable because sheep shed a new fleece every year — alongside organic cotton, castor-bean-oil-based soles and recycled rubber. The company, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Hyderabad, takes its name from a blend of the founders’ parents’ names, Neelam and Manjeet.

The struggle years

The first hurdle was not manufacturing but conviction. In the company’s own retelling, early investors dismissed a sustainability-first footwear brand as too niche for Indian buyers, which pushed the founders to bootstrap the venture in its earliest years rather than raise institutional money straight away — Neeman’s did not close its first outside round, a $1 million pre-Series A led by Anicut Angel Fund and AngelList, until 2 March 2020, roughly three years after founding.

The losses that followed were not gentle. Even as revenue grew, the RoC filings tell an unsoftened story: a net loss of about ₹25 crore in FY22 widened by 36% to ₹34 crore in FY23, against revenue of ₹69 crore — meaning the company spent ₹1.49 to generate every rupee of revenue that year, with an EBITDA margin of -46.5%. That is the arithmetic of a brand still finding its footing, not one cruising toward profitability.

By 2023 a third strain showed up: the ceiling on pure online growth. Footwear carries some of the highest return rates in direct-to-consumer retail because fit and comfort cannot be judged from a product photo, and every return costs a brand twice — once in reverse logistics, once in a customer’s shaken trust. Neeman’s had built itself as a classic digitally-native brand, dependent on performance marketing, and that channel was becoming both more expensive and structurally limited for a category where people want to try before they buy.

The turning point

The response, starting around mid-2023, was to open exclusive brand stores — a reversal for a company that had spent its first six years as an online-first brand. Before the shift, Neeman’s was selling almost entirely through its website and marketplaces, on revenue of ₹69 crore in FY23 and widening losses. By June 2025, 18 physical stores were contributing roughly 18% of overall business, with management targeting 100 stores and ₹400 crore of annual turnover within two years. By September 2026 that ambition had grown further still: a plan for a 500-store network and ₹1,000 crore of revenue over three years, with the company expecting to close the financial year to March 2027 at around ₹350 crore, up from more than ₹185 crore in the year before. The logic is straightforward — a customer who tries on a pair in a store rarely returns it, so the margin saved on one avoided return can cover the cost of running the store visit itself.

The money behind it

• Pre-Series A, $1 million, 2 March 2020: led by Anicut Angel Fund (Tushar Singh and Rohit Anand, who joined the board) with AngelList and angel investors including Ashvin Chadha participating — Neeman’s first institutional money, arriving nearly three years after founding.
• Series A, ₹20 crore (~$2.7 million), August 2021: led by Sixth Sense Ventures, which went on to become the largest single institutional shareholder, holding about 42.9% as of the FY23 RoC filing; the round funded product R&D, category expansion and early plans for international entry.
• Series B, kicked off June 2022: an extended round that fed into the subsequent B2 tranche, per Entrackr’s reporting.
• Series B2, ₹35.5 crore (~$4 million), closed around December 2025: led by Snam Solutions (₹16 crore), with Grand Anicut (₹7 crore) and Sharrp Ventures (₹5 crore), plus ₹7.5 crore from other institutional and individual investors; priced at ₹6,465 per compulsorily convertible preference share.
• Total raised: reported at $19.4 million across seven rounds from 45 investors as of September 2026 (Tracxn); Entrackr separately put cumulative funding at “over $17 million” just before the B2 close, so the true figure likely sits in the $19–21 million range depending on when it is measured.
• Latest valuation: a reported post-money valuation of about ₹439 crore (~$49 million) following the Series B2 round — a company-disclosed, RoC-filing-derived figure rather than an audited or publicly confirmed number.

How it makes money

Money comes in almost entirely from selling shoes and apparel directly to consumers rather than through a wholesale or franchise fee model. Revenue splits across the company’s own website, marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra), quick commerce (Zepto) and, increasingly, its own retail stores — there is no third-party take rate to speak of, since Neeman’s owns the customer relationship on every channel except the marketplaces, where it pays listing and fulfilment fees rather than a revenue share it discloses.

• Cost of materials: raw material costs (imported merino wool, recycled PET, organic cotton, castor-bean-oil soles) ran to about ₹40 crore in FY23, roughly 58% of that year’s ₹69 crore revenue — sustainable inputs have not come cheap.
• Customer acquisition: heavy reliance on paid social and search, a category where ad costs have climbed 20-40% year on year across Indian D2C brands, squeezing margins for anyone without an efficient channel.
• Where the margin should sit: the direct-to-consumer model is meant to capture the retail markup a wholesale brand would give away — but that margin has instead been absorbed by returns, logistics and marketing.
• The part people get wrong: buyers and commentators often assume “sustainable” and “premium-margin” go together. Neeman’s numbers say otherwise — its EBITDA margin was still -46.5% in FY23 (improved from -51% in FY22), and unit economics only turned the corner from spending ₹1.49 to spending ₹1.24 per rupee of revenue between FY23 and FY25.

The numbers

Figures below are from financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies, as reported by Entrackr (FY22–FY24) and Startuppedia (FY25). Unit: ₹ crore.

• FY23 → FY24: revenue up 11.4% (₹69.05 crore to ₹76.94 crore, per Entrackr’s RoC-filing report), loss narrowed 14% to ₹29.23 crore.
• FY24 → FY25: revenue up 38% to ₹108 crore, loss narrowed a further 21% to ₹23 crore (per Startuppedia’s RoC-filing report, which put FY24 revenue at a slightly higher ₹78.5 crore — the small variance between the two outlets’ FY24 figures likely reflects different rounding or restated filings, not a disputed fact).
• Direction of travel: four straight years of revenue growth and three straight years of narrowing losses, but zero years of profit since incorporation.

Where the money comes from

• Online channels: own website, Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and quick commerce (Zepto) together made up the large majority of revenue, with offline at roughly 18% as of June 2025 — implying online carried close to 82%.
• Offline retail: 18 exclusive brand stores as of June 2025, up from none before mid-2023, concentrated in Tier II and III cities such as Indore, Kozhikode, Trivandrum and Lucknow, contributing about 18% of overall business.
• Product mix: footwear (sneakers, loafers, sandals, flip-flops, formal shoes) remains the core; the company has since added an apparel line, by its own account to extend the “one thing that works all day” positioning beyond feet.
• Customer base: more than 30 lakh (3 million) customers served to date, with a stated repeat-purchase rate of 34% — the surprise is how much of the current growth ambition rests not on acquiring new online customers but on getting existing ones to visit a physical store.

The risks

• Structurally high returns in online footwear: fit and comfort cannot be judged from a photo, so returns run high across the category; each one costs Neeman’s twice, in reverse logistics and in a customer’s dented trust — the exact problem the store rollout is meant to fix, but only in the cities it reaches.
• Unproven path to profitability: eight fiscal years in, Neeman’s has never reported a profit; FY25’s ₹23 crore net loss came alongside 38% revenue growth, meaning scale alone has not yet closed the gap, and the company was still spending ₹1.24 to earn ₹1 of revenue that year.
• A capital-intensive store bet funded by a comparatively small raise: the plan to reach 500 stores and ₹1,000 crore of revenue within three years follows a Series B2 round of just ₹35.5 crore, so either fresh capital or a sharp swing toward positive unit economics will be needed to fund a national retail rollout at that pace.

The takeaway

A sustainability story earns a brand attention and a wedge of loyal early customers, but it does not exempt it from the underlying economics of the category it competes in. Neeman’s spent years treating its problem as a materials problem — better wool, better soles, better packaging — when the more stubborn issue was one every online shoe seller faces: you cannot sell fit over the internet as reliably as you can in a store. The fix that is finally bending its loss curve down was not a new fibre. It was going back to a shop with a chair and a mirror.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Neeman’s and when?

Neeman’s was founded in 2017 in Hyderabad by Taranjeet Singh Chhabra, who now serves as CEO, and Amar Preet Singh. The idea grew out of Chhabra’s frustration with packing multiple pairs of shoes for a trip and a shared belief that most footwear relied on materials that were not eco-friendly.

What makes Neeman’s shoes “sustainable”?

The company uses materials such as merino wool imported from Australia, organic cotton, recycled PET plastic, castor-bean-oil-based soles and recycled rubber, in place of purely synthetic materials common in mainstream footwear.

Is Neeman’s profitable?

No. Neeman’s has reported a net loss in every fiscal year on record, including FY25, when it lost ₹23 crore on revenue of ₹108 crore, though the loss has narrowed for three consecutive years, per Registrar of Companies filings.

Who are Neeman’s biggest investors and how much has it raised?

Sixth Sense Ventures, which led the 2021 Series A, is the largest reported institutional shareholder. The most recent Series B2 round, closed around December 2025, was led by Snam Solutions alongside Grand Anicut and Sharrp Ventures. Total funding is reported at roughly $19–21 million across seven rounds, depending on the source and date of measurement.

Is Neeman’s listed or planning an IPO?

No. Neeman’s is a private company with no announced IPO plans as of September 2026. Its most recent reported valuation, after the Series B2 round, was about ₹439 crore (~$49 million).

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Tracxn, Neeman’s company profile, accessed September 2026
• YourStory, “Merino wool shoes hyderabad neemans” (founding story), January 2019
• Open magazine, “Heart and Sole”, September 2021
• YourStory, “Sustainable shoe startup Neeman’s raises Rs 20 Cr in Series A round from Sixth Sense Ventures”, August/September 2021
• YourStory, funding report on Neeman’s $1 million pre-Series A round, March 2020
• Entrackr, “Footwear brand Neeman’s posts Rs 69 Cr revenue in FY23; losses up 43%”, January 2024
• Entrackr, “Exclusive: Footwear brand Neeman’s raising fresh funding from multiple investors” (Series B2, FY24 financials, valuation), December 2025
• Startuppedia, “Neeman’s revenue jumps 38% to Rs 108 crore in FY25; loss narrows 21% to Rs 23 crore”, February 2026
• Indian Retailer, “Neeman’s to open 100 stores, targets Rs 400 crore revenue in 2 years”, June 2025
• D2C Insider Pulse, “Neeman’s targets ₹1,000 Cr revenue with 500-store offline expansion”, September 2026
• DAiOM, “Building a D2C Footwear Omnichannel business – the Neemans Way!”, August 2026
• Tofler, “Neeman’s Shoes – Success Story, History, Founders, Business Model & More”, June 2023

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