HOOOOOO...SECRET ABOUT SOME INDIAN

In the heart of Indiranagar, Bangalore’s young, techie neighborhood, a series of storefronts and restaurants assaults your senses — Starbucks! California Pizza Kitchen! United Colors of Benetton! In the middle of this show of middle-class success sits a window display of what an older Indian man might delicately call ladies’ items — bras, lacy underwear,intimacies. Inside, though, daintiness gets ditched: Drake’s beats blast through the speaker and bright pink, peach and striped patterns bloom everywhere as a few young women browse and Sherin Mariel provides consultations — measuring bust and cup sizes, offering sisterly advice. But when a lady finds a perfect fit, she can’t buy it here. She takes her purchase to the Web, because this is the first physical store of Zivame.com, a ecommerce company headquartered here.

Zivame, Clovia, PrettySecrets and a few others are emerging leaders of a new fleet of lingerie startups that are taking advantage of India’s online shopping craze, an industry worth an estimated $23 billion, Goldman Sachs reported last year. They’re capitalizing on the attitudes of young sexuality-positive working women — with money to spare — who will take their leaning in with a side of lace and polka dots, thank you. Here in India — where 400 million people are expected to be online this year, surpassing the United States, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India — ecommerce is in a gilded age. There’s Amazon’s $2 billion competitors and Snapdeal, as well as Lenskart, jewelry home-delivery services, grocery booms and more. “It’s like the Wild West here,” says NYU Stern professor of business Anindya Ghose.

Women are getting bolder about what they wear inside.

Sure, new players will face an uphill battle to compete with the bigwigs, Ghose says, but these companies believe that it’s all about going niche. Series C–funded Zivame’s CEO, Richa Kar, sees a targeted market here: women who want to feel good about their bodies. And the way Kar talks about buying bras — bras and panties hang around her busy office like casual ornaments and a collaged poster of scantily clad women greets you in the lobby — is a far cry from the old days. (Most lingerie stores are staffed by men, who can make shoppers uncomfortable, and who don’t provide insight on sizing — a tricky matter — she says.) Meanwhile, in small towns, one of which Kar is from, women shop for bras at mom-and-pop stores with their mothers until the age of 21, buying dull beige and careless colors.